Getting Over Obstacles for ‘Under Suspicion’

Actors Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman, who typically work on studio-backed movies, are in San Juan, Puerto Rico, shooting an independent production that took an unusual level of finagling to get financed.

The offbeat subject matter and web of underlying rights complicated what has been a pet project of Hackman’s for more than 15 years.

“Under Suspicion,” a $25-million psychological thriller directed by Stephen Hopkins, is a remake of Claude Miller’s controversial French cult film “Garde a Vue,” about a rich and powerful lawyer whose life begins to unravel when he’s accused of raping and murdering two young girls.

Hackman has wanted to act in a remake of Miller’s movie ever since Hackman and his teenage daughter stumbled onto the French film at the Beverly Center after walking out of a movie they didn’t like.

“I was really taken by it,” said Hackman in a phone interview from the “Under Suspicion” set in San Juan, recalling how he got a copy of the movie, then had an English translation written to send to prospective backers.

“I couldn’t get anyone interested,” Hackman recalled. “The subject matter was tricky, and nobody was willing to put up close to $1 million for the rights. . . . It’s about a pedophile, so it was a tough sell.”

Hackman, whose numerous screen credits include two Oscar-winning performances, in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 hit “Unforgiven” and “The French Connection,” said after “fumbling around” with the project for several years and failing to get anyone interested in buying the rights and funding the film, “I finally tabled it . . . but it was always in the back of my mind.”

When he ran into Freeman--his co-star in “Unforgiven”--a few years ago at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles, Hackman said, he mentioned the project and suggested that the two of them work together on a remake.

Freeman recalled: “When I ran into him at the Four Seasons, he said, ‘I have a tape I want to send you,’ and he wanted to know what I thought of it as a possible vehicle for us.”

Freeman, acclaimed for his acting in such films as “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Seven,” said Hackman later asked him which part he wanted to play.

Freeman selected the role of veteran police Capt. Victor Benezet, the father of two girls who is obsessed with stopping the child killer and who spends an entire evening interrogating his prime suspect--the distinguished and wealthy but abrasive tax attorney Henry Hearst, played by Hackman.

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Hackman readily admits he’s “not very good at business” and told Freeman that if he really wanted to make the movie, Freeman and Freeman’s producing partner Lori McCreary would have to take on the responsibility of getting the remake rights and finding someone to finance the picture.

“I couldn’t get it done myself,” conceded Hackman, who said Freeman’s and McCreary’s “perseverance” is what finally got the movie made.

Acquiring remake rights to a French film typically requires the agreement of the original director, writers, producers and financiers.

In the case of “Garde,” it took seven parties to approve the rights deal, said McCreary, who has partnered with Freeman in the production company Revelations Entertainment and produced the film with Anne Marie Gillen and Hopkins.

Permission had to be obtained from the estate of the late John Wainwright, the writer whose book “Brainwashed” was the source material for the French movie.

Then production company Les Films Araines and French media conglomerate TF1, which helped finance the original movie, had to agree.

“It was a long and arduous process,” said McCreary, who credits TF1’s U.S. chief Maurice Leblond with guiding the parties through some sticky negotiations.

“We had to have a contract with all seven parties . . . and they all had different interests,” recalled the producer. About six months before the deal closed and everyone had finally agreed on a purchase price for the rights of about $700,000, TF1, in a separate deal, coincidentally acquired Films Araines--which made things a bit easier.

McCreary said the paperwork was signed last year on the first day of the Cannes International Film Festival, where TF1 was prepared to pre-sell the film to foreign distributors.

Based on the amount of pre-sales, McCreary said, TF1 was “confident enough to cash-flow the film out of their own accounts, which was great, because it meant we didn’t have to go to the bank.”

Although all contracts were then in place, McCreary said, and Hopkins (whose credits include “Lost in Space,” “Blown Away” and “The Ghost and the Darkness”) had agreed to direct, Freeman and Hackman had not yet approved a shooting script.

Hopkins said he was torn among three or four writers but that he was impressed that Peter Iliff (“Varsity Blues,” “Patriot Games”) was willing to take the risk of working on the script without a full upfront fee and without the guaranteed approval of the film’s stars.

Iliff “had the guts to say, ‘Let’s do it,’ ” recalled Hopkins, “so we worked on the script for six weeks day and night, and then Gene and Morgan signed on.”

Hopkins said that he kept the general structure of the French movie, sticking very close to the central story line, but that the original version was “very theatrical, like a stage play, so I didn’t want to replicate that.”

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The director changed the backdrop from Paris to San Juan, feeling that the story needed to take place in a small town with “a sense of old-fashioned social standing and where it really matters what people think of you.”

McCreary said Freeman and Hackman--who also served as executive producers with Ross Grayson Bell on “Under Suspicion”--deferred their salaries and are equity partners in the movie, and McCreary and Freeman’s company Revelations holds the copyright jointly with TF1.

The parties intentionally held back from making a domestic distribution deal with a U.S. studio--since the control of the project would have shifted--and only now are beginning to have those conversations.

McCreary said: “The reason Morgan and I started this company was to make films with our vision and the director’s vision, and that’s easier to do in an independent forum.”