Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009)

Why would a man frame himself... for murder?

Remake of a 1956 Fritz Lang film in which a novelist's investigation of a dirty district attorney leads to a setup within the courtroom.

Date of release
2009-02-05
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (359)
Runtime
1h 45m
Genres
Thriller
Director
Peter Hyams

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is a 2009 American crime thriller film written, shot, and directed by Peter Hyams, starring Michael Douglas, Jesse Metcalfe and Amber Tamblyn. Based on Fritz Lang's 1956 film of the same name, it was Hyams' second reimagining of an RKO property after 1990's Narrow Margin. In it, a young journalist (Metcalfe) sets himself up as a murderer to expose the unethical practices of a star prosecutor with a trumped-up conviction record (Douglas), but finds himself unable to produce the evidence he had prepared to restore his innocence.

Production

A remake of Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was previously in the works at Universal circa 1998 for producer Gary Lucchesi, as part of a planned series of RKO remakes made in cooperation with various studios such as Universal, Disney and Miramax. It was then slated to be directed by Jonathan Mostow and written by Sam Montgomery, both of whom were coming off the hit thriller Breakdown.

The project resurfaced in April 2004 when New Regency announced it had bought a spec script from David Collard for a remake at Fox. In June 2005, Franc Reyes was publicly attached to rewrite and direct the film, scheduled to begin shooting in September of that year, but his version did not materialize either.

The remake was re-announced in February 2008 at Berlin's European Film Market, with Peter Hyams directing and Michael Douglas headlining the cast. This time, RKO partnered with Mark Damon's Foresight Unlimited, Moshe Diamant's Signature Pictures and Courtney Solomon's Autonomous Pictures, a company spun off his After Dark Films to produce less genre-oriented fare.

Douglas also had a pre-existing relationship with Moshe Diamant, who had produced several movies in the late 80s and early 90s with his company The Stone Group. Hyams had previously directed Douglas in another legal thriller, 1983's The Star Chamber.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was shot in the Shreveport–Bossier agglomeration in Louisiana, where it is set. It was part of a record slate of films shot in 2008 in the state, an attractive destination for producers since the advent of a tax incentive program directed at the movie industry in 2002. The film's central location is the city's historic Caddo Parish Courthouse, built in 1926.

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