Russell Crowe will spend THE NEXT THREE DAYS with Paul Haggis

Russell Crowe will be playing a modern day Harrison Ford when he makes The Next Three Days at Lionsgate this September, a remake of the 2008 French film "Pour Elle". In typical Ford fashion (see Frantic, The Fugitive, Firewall, and in a way Air Force One), he will play the "everyman", who rises when faced with an extraordinary circumstance as his teacher wife is falsely convicted of a murder, and he comes up with a desperate plan to free her. So far, so good... until Variety tell you that the writer/director of the project is Crash'sPaul Haggis, a screenwriter whose amazing talent for producing greatly disguised mediocre is now infamous. But I'll give him the fact he's got a great eye for casting, and pimping his work...

"The deeper theme here is, would you save the woman you loved if you knew that by doing so, you would turn into a man that woman could no longer love?"

Now there's a hook I quite like and here's a thriller that I can imagine, a little like Taken, will go down well with Joe-Public. Inglourious Basterds actress Diane Kruger played the wife character in the original French movie and now she's gotten a little more exposure in Hollywood, she might just seem like an easy choice for Lionsgate. I could see Kruger/Crowe... After the jump, the trailer for Pour Elle...