Synopsis
After being kidnapped from her home, Jessica Martin manages to repair a broken telephone and randomly reaches Ryan, a young man driving through Los Angeles. With the line constantly at risk of disconnecting, Ryan must find Jessica's family, expose the corrupt officers behind the abduction, and keep moving before the phone battery dies.
Factoids & Trivia
- Larry Cohen conceived the story as an intentional counterpart to *Phone Booth*. Instead of trapping the main character in one location, *Cellular* keeps its hero in motion across Los Angeles while the phone call maintains the suspense.
- Chris Morgan wrote the screenplay from Cohen's story. Morgan shaped the material around the idea that an ordinary person could become heroic when forced into an extraordinary crisis.
- Chris Evans performed his own car stunts after undergoing five weeks of training at a Los Angeles stunt school. The production also relied heavily on the cast for practical stunt work.
- The film was released in the United States on September 10, 2004. It earned approximately $57.7 million worldwide against an estimated $25 million budget.
- The story was later remade as the 2008 Hong Kong action thriller *Connected*, which retained Larry Cohen's story credit while adapting the premise to Hong Kong locations and characters.