“If Scorsese can make a three-and-a-half-hour movie, I want to.” Ben Affleck's brilliant 15-year-old heist movie was almost an erotic thriller
Before Ben Affleck took over the project and created the iconic The Town, the film previously could have been an erotic thriller in the hands of another director.
Many movie fans probably the film from 15 years ago, The Town, which Ben Affleck directed, co-wrote and starred in. Still fresh from the success of Gone Baby Gone, he shouldered another project after another filmmaker had to part with this interesting idea in the world of cinema. The Town was such an interesting project because it was an adaptation of the book Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, which was just asking for a film adaptation.
However, before Affleck took the helm of the project, it was Adrian Lyne, director of Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and Lolita, known for some of the most widely discussed erotic films, who had previously worked on it. Unsurprisingly, he also wanted to focus on the love story in The Town, creating it as an erotic thriller about a criminal falling in love with the captive. This comes from the words of Ben Affleck, who shared them in an interview on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of The Tower for The Ringer.
[Adrian Lyne] had an adaptation that was very, very different and it was really focused on the love story. It was really more of an erotic thriller: The criminal who falls in love with the captive kind of thing.
Lyne believed in the film and in his skills. He also had big ambitions. The film was to be shot over 90 days, and Lyne wanted a budget of $90 million, which Warner Bros. could not agree to. Lyne was supposed to find another studio for his work, but despite his attempts, he failed to sell his project to anyone, so he had to let it go, as mentioned by Chuck Hogan and Peter Craig, co-writer of The Town.
Adrian was at this really ambitious double-album phase of his career, and he didn’t want to cut anything. He saw it and he was like, “This is perfect. This is the script I want.” And I said, “Adrian, this is gonna be a three-and-a-half-hour movie.” He’s like, “Well, if Scorsese can make a three-and-a-half-hour movie, I want to.” […]
[But] Warners gave it back to Adrian and said, “You know what, shop it around.” He took it to Imagine; he took it to Universal. They were about to buy it but they wanted to cut it, too. Everybody wanted to cut it. It eventually just blew up. Adrian was off the project.
And so ended Adrian Lyne's adventure with the adaptation of Prince of Thieves. This one, in turn, ended up in the hands of Ben Affleck, who, although he also put the love plot between the criminal and the captive at the center, but it was not the trope that defined the entire movie with one of the most iconic heist scenes.
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