ALEX PROYAS / DIRECTOR

After “The Crow,” haunted by the tragic 1993 on-set firearm accident that killed star Brandon Lee, Egypt-born and Australia-raised director Alex Proyas took his time before returning with a new feature. With the dystopian “Dark City,” he’s re-staking his place in modern Gothic cinema and asserting himself, at 35, as a key Australian filmmaker beside such film school classmates as Jane Campion and P.J. Hogan.

GUN-SHY: “I was very badly affected by the tragedy. Brandon and I were good friends. After ‘The Crow’ I was offered a lot of bad action movies and I didn’t want to do that--certainly didn’t want to be on a set with people shooting off guns everywhere.”

BACK TO THE SOURCE: “People say ‘Dark City’ is like ‘Brazil’ and ‘Blade Runner’ because we created this futuristic city. But visually all this stuff goes back to ‘Metropolis,’ which was the first of this genre. We tried to go back to it as well and make it fresh.”

INFLATION: “The ‘Titanic’ success will drive budgets up. I don’t want to make $200-million movies--not that there’s any danger of that at this point. But 10 years down the line everything will either have to be a huge event movie or something under $10 million, with nothing in between.”

BOFFO: “There’s such an obsession with the budget of a film and the box office, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Used to be box office was reported in Variety but not in Better Housekeeping or whatever.”

I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE: “Now if you come out and don’t get big box office, you get bumped from the theaters and have no chance for word of mouth. Hopefully, one day we can all download movies and watch at home on high-definition screens. That could give more films a lease on life.”

HOT PROJECT: “The best script I’ve read for quite a while is ‘RKO 281,’ basically about the making of ‘Citizen Kane.’ For a director, it’s a wonderful script to read--captures the torment of putting these things together. It’s funny and clever. If it gets made, it will probably win every Oscar imaginable.”

PAST MASTERS: “I’m big on laserdiscs, just like watching old movies that I know will please me. I’m a big [director] Michael Powell fan and these are films I never got to see in a proper way--’Black Narcissus’ and so on. I often go back and watch them over and over and bore my friends.”

CHANGE OF PACE: “I really want to do something different, want to do a comedy. Everyone says that’s hard to believe considering what I’ve done, but I’d love that.”