Who directed the 2011 film The Box, loosely based on a Richard Matheson story?

Richard Kelly directed The Box, a film loosely based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button.”

The film stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a couple offered a mysterious button box. They are told that pressing the button will provide money but cause the death of someone they do not know. Its moral dilemma resembles the Pandora pattern: opening or activating an object produces consequences that cannot easily be controlled.

The film was released in 2009, not 2011, a date sometimes confused with later home-video or streaming availability. Richard Kelly also wrote the screenplay. The story’s original form was published as “Button, Button,” and the film expands that premise into science fiction and psychological horror. The box is therefore a modern thematic relative of Pandora’s vessel rather than a direct retelling of the Greek myth.