the past to investigate his girlfriend's murder. As they were talking about it, Marsilii says "I had this explosive kind of epiphany—"NO! He should fall in love with her *while* he's watching the last few days of her life. The first time he sees her should be at her autopsy!" Rossio later wrote, "The first concept was good, and the second concept was good, too, and together they were great. Ideas and issues and themes seemed to resonate, and in the end the screenplay felt as if it was telling a single powerful story." Marsilii and Rossio wrote the script together. They communicated via email in attempts to develop the plot due to communication difficulties. However, the creation of Déjà Vus progenitor was set aside by the September 11, 2001 attacks that disrupted New York-native Marsilii, and the advent of the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which occupied Los Angeles-native Rossio. However, by 2004, the two screenwriters had completed the concept. Brian Greene from Columbia University was brought in as a consultant to help create a scientifically plausible feel to the script. Greene stated "the way I try to explain wormholes in terms of bending paper and connecting the corners, that's there in the film and it was fun to see that that made it in." The script was sold for a record $5 million. It was bought by Jerry Bruckheimer who got Denzel Washington to star and Tony Scott to direct. Rossio later wrote that Scott was "Completely the wrong choice, in that Tony had stated he had no interest in making a science fiction film, and suggested the time travel aspect be dumped. ... My hope was that we had a screenplay that could be the next Sixth Sense. Tony wanted to make just another also-ran surveillance film." Rossio says at one point Scott quit the project and he and Marsilii had to work on the script so that Denzel would not quit. They reworked the script over two weeks and "the revision was deemed so good that not only did Denzel re-commit, he called Tony and talked him into coming back on board. Reportedly Denzel made Tony look him in the eye and swear he wouldn't quit the movie again. Tony said yes, but on one condition—he wanted to bring on his own writers." Filming Principal photography in New Orleans,