GETTING OFF THE GROUND

With a long list of producing credits which includes Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface, Sea of Love and Serpico, Martin Bregman's instincts for good material have always been first rate. And as soon as he read Jeffery Deaver's best-selling novel The Bone Collector, he knew he had found the makings of a totally unique thriller.

"It's exciting and very scary," Bregman says. "It's also a love story, but a very different and strange love story. It has many elements that I have never seen put together in this way, and it deals with a heroic figure that has never been done."

Bregman had worked with screenwriter Jeremy Iacone on the recent film One Tough Cop, and approached him to write the screenplay.

Michael Bregman had long admired the films of Phillip Noyce, and at his suggestion, Noyce became their first choice as a director. Noyce was drawn to the script, in part, because he saw four stories in one.

Noyce says, "It's a love story. It's a thriller. It's a detective story. And it's a story of renewal and resurrection. Two people have lost themselves and given up, they find each other, and ultimately, the will that had failed them."

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