Thinking outside ‘The Box’

He’s looking to rebound with the Friday release of “The Box,’’ his adaptation of the 1970 short story “Button, Button’’ by venerable genre writer Richard Matheson (“I Am Legend,’’ “What Dreams May Come’’). The premise: Average suburban couple Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) have an eerily disfigured stranger, Mr. Steward (Frank Langella), show up at their door with an offer to pay them a million dollars. All they have to do is open the box he presents to them, and press a mysterious red button inside. The lone small catch is that as soon as they do, someone, somewhere in the world, will die.

The Globe sat down with the soft-spoken Kelly, 34, at this summer’s San Diego pop-culture fest Comic-Con International, a place where makers of the slow-to-release film, which shot in Boston two years ago, could gauge early reaction among the “Darko’’ demo. Kelly candidly admitted to fans that he was anxious for the movie to be widely accessible, half-joking, “Hopefully I’ll have a film that grosses more than $1 million, [because] I’d love to be able to do 3-D stuff and motion-capture.’’ Still, such considerations hardly seem to have deterred him from infusing his work, as usual, with wildly eclectic ideas.

Q. Were you drawn to the original short story because there was so much room to fill things out, or despite that?

A. It was kind of a blockbuster concept, one of those ideas that just stick with you. And it felt like it was begging to be expanded upon - like the first act of a film, in a way. In six pages, Arthur and Norma were really only sketched. The story took place in New York City, they were offered $50,000, and it ended with the husband getting pushed in front of a subway. What was exciting for me was to try to come up with acts two and three, where Arthur and Norma have to deal with the consequences of pushing the button, and try to redeem themselves. They also become detectives in a way, trying to track down Mr. Steward as he lures them into his web of intrigue and they become these sort of test subjects. The story always hinted that Steward works for some sort of international organization, but it was only mentioned briefly.

Q. You’ve said that you worked a lot of personal background into the additions you made.

A. Yeah, we’ve transplanted everything to Virginia in 1976, and a lot of my parents’ story is in it. It gives Cameron and James something to base their characters on. My dad was at NASA for 15 years, and worked on a team that helped develop the camera system for the Viking probe that photographed Mars for the first time in the summer of ’76. And that’s very specific to James’s character and to a subplot of the film that relates to the construction of the button unit. And my parents loved Alfred Hitchcock-type films growing up, so I just thought they’d get a real kick out of seeing themselves planted into this Richard Matheson suspense yarn.

Q. One thing fueling Arthur and Norma’s dilemma is that they’re having money problems. You sure picked a prime time to be kicking around this particular moral quandary.

A. Yeah, a lot of this comes down to the idea of living beyond your means. It’s in our nature as Americans to want to live the best life we can - but ultimately, what are people willing to do in order to achieve that? Another issue is just wondering about all the buttons that we push, literally and metaphorically, in everyday life. And we push a lot more buttons now than we did then - your BlackBerry, your computer, your remote. What are the consequences? It’s this gigantic metaphor that you could really endlessly debate.

Q. And yet, that said, you still chose to set the story in 1976?

A. In the years I spent spitballing how to adapt this, anytime I tried to think of doing it in present-day circumstances, it just didn’t work, because the concept of [a mysterious stranger], someone you don’t know, doesn’t exist anymore. With social networking and everything, you can find anyone - privacy has pretty much been eliminated. There’s something simpler about going back to the ’70s, where the idea of not being able to find out who someone is is much more believable, and has a lot more impact. I don’t have to deal with the modern-technology logic question: Why wouldn’t Arthur and Norma just immediately Google “Mr. Steward’’ right after he leaves the house [laughs]? I don’t want to have that scene.

Q. How was the experience of finally tackling a mainstream studio project?

A. Obviously, being blessed with Cameron, James, and Frank gave me the opportunity to make this film at Warner Brothers. And it was a real relief for me to know that I’d be making a film that was going to be put on the big screen in a lot of theaters, with a marketing budget. These are luxuries that I hadn’t had before.

Q. Did it change your process at all?

A. It’s really just about getting the studio invested in the story. And they got it, they understood it, they were on board. They’d see [footage] every day, and you’d get notes - the normal process that every filmmaker goes through with a studio. You just adapt to it. And strangely enough, I felt like I was able to navigate those waters in a way that I got to make exactly the movie I wanted to make. I’m kind of shocked it worked out that way [laughs], but it did.