Plotting the Tower of Heist

MANILA, Philippines - Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer is one of a handful of filmmakers with the intuitive ability to pair Brett Ratner, the action-savvy director with a string of box-office hits to his name, and a high-profile cast led by comedy superstars Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy to deliver Tower Heist, an action-comedy that scales new heights. The movie, distributed by United International Pictures, is currently showing in Metro Manila theaters.

The producer shares how the project began: “Eddie and I have worked with one another since we filmed Boomerang in the early ’90s. In 2005, he pitched an idea to Brett and me to develop a film with a number of comedians playing guys who were down on their luck. He wanted to create a movie with characters that were not the cool, slick guys. His idea was that the story would follow a group of disgruntled employees in a building like the Trump Tower who seize their chance and plan a robbery. Naturally, everything that could possibly go wrong with their ill-conceived plans did.”

From inception to the first day of principal photography, it would take almost five years before the film would fire on all cylinders. Grazer, Ratner and Murphy were in no rush, however, as they wanted to make sure that the project was tonally perfect.

Grazer and Murphy found Ratner to be the perfect partner to helm Tower Heist and liked the fact that he would work with Ocean’s Eleven screenwriter Ted Griffin and Catch Me If You Can writer Jeff Nathanson to hone the earlier work of Accepted scribes Adam Cooper and Bill Collage.

Director Ratner, who is equally comfortable with the comedy genre as he is with action, shares something unique with Murphy: Both are film aficionados who possess encyclopedic recall of scenes from classic Hollywood and foreign films. However, it was Ratner’s deep affinity for the heist movies of the ’70s — from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three to The Hot Rock and — that most attracted him to Tower Heist.