NEW YORK, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- "Freedomland" director Joe Roth says he followed filmmaker Clint Eastwood by making a cheaper movie that didn't require him to compromise creatively.
Revealing that the Julianne Moore-Samuel L. Jackson thriller cost $30 million, Roth told reporters in New York recently: "We would have been $60 million, but, you see, if I had made it for $60 million, I wouldn't have trusted myself not to make some kind of Hollywood ending out of it, stuff like that.
"At $30 million, given what our deals are, it gave me the courage economically to go out there," continued Roth, who is also the head of Revolution Studios, the studio that made "Freedomland." "And it was inspired a lot by what Eastwood's been doing. Because he makes his movies in that range. We shot ours in 42 days like that. He made 'Mystic River' and 'Million Dollar Baby' like that. He doesn't have to make concessions to any kind of larger organization, given the fact that he makes those movies inexpensively."
