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David Benioff’s script sold for 1.8 million dollars with David Fincher attached to direct; he worked on it for about a year. Marc Forster says he liked the draft he inherited and made only small adjustments. Producer Arnon Milchan told him he wanted the years of Brazil back and handed him complete creative freedom. Forster wanted no cuts between scenes, only transitions flowing into one another, and his own examples are small. In the park the world runs at normal speed while the fountain water drops into slow motion for seconds. The view outside the window keeps changing in the apartment Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor share. McGregor’s trousers are short because that is how they look from Ryan Gosling’s eyeline as he kneels beside him at the end. The calendar is odd too: shot in late autumn 2003, edited through 2004, broken off while Forster promoted Finding Neverland and decided against releasing the two together, mixed and finished in January 2005. It collapsed commercially, taking 8.5 million dollars worldwide against a 50 million budget. A good fit if you read a background or a costume quietly changing mid scene as a clue, not a mistake. Not for viewers who expect the final explanation to settle everything; Forster says the ending was never meant to be the point.