Director Doug Liman on the set of Jumper Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

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Director Doug Liman, whose work includes Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and television's The OC, is a reputed flake. His productions typically run off the rails because he's apt to change his mind or even have trouble making it up. But then he delivers something none of us has quite seen before. His new film, Jumper, is no exception. Based on the book by Stephen Gould, it stars Hayden Christensen as a kid from a broken home who discovers he can teleport himself all over the world, including bank vaults, the Egyptian pyramids, Big Ben, and the distance between his couch and the refrigerator. This power leaves him a bit isolated until he encounters a guy just like him (Jamie Bell), a group of men bent on destroying guys like him (led by Samuel L. Jackson), and an old girlfriend (Rachel Bilson).

While most directors would let CGI do all the work, Liman wasn't satisfied with that, nor with leads Tom Sturridge and Teresa Palmer — he replaced them right before the shoot. We spoke to him before he jetted off to Cairo to promote the film.

What happened with the leads?
Just before we started shooting the movie (Fox studio executive) Tom Rothman and (producer) Arnon Milchan came to me and said, 'Wouldn't it be better if your leads were not in high school?' They were very clear about it. They're like, 'We're telling you this from a commercial point of view. Now that you're about to start shooting the movie and we're starting to see what it's going to be, we think this is going to be a huge movie, and we think it's too big to be a high school movie. We think you should recast it and make it older.' I had never thought of that. I just took the book for what it was and accepted the characters. But as soon I started to spend a little time thinking about it, I realized creatively they were right, that the relationship between David (Christensen) and Millie (Bilson) would be more interesting if they were 25 than if they were 18, that there was a lot more I could do with it. There would be more backstory, more baggage.

This had nothing to do with name recognition?
No. I think Hayden and Rachel have huge futures ahead of them, but it's not like I cast Will Smith. The thing about me that makes me not the most popular guy in the studio circuit is that if I hear of a better idea, regardless of how disruptive it is, I physically can't not pursue it. It was like, "OK, we're a week from shooting, this is a better idea." In this case the studio brought it to me. Normally I'm the one doing something to wreak havoc on them.

Was casting Rachel something you had to sell to the producers?
When I chose to cast her she was the star of The OC and the show was still on the air and still shooting. Traditionally if you want to hire an actor who is the star of a TV show you wait until their hiatus. And I didn't plan on doing that. I was going to shoot it at the same time as the TV show even if the TV show shot in Manhattan Beach and the movie shot in Toronto predominately and also traveled the globe. That was the biggest challenge with the studio. It was something they'd never done before. She'd work in L.A., get on the red eye, get four or five hours of sleep, work the whole day, work one more day with us, then fly back and go right back to work. She had about two and half months of no days off and at least one or two nights of sleep a week being on an airplane. A first class seat for her, that's like a lot of room, so I didn't feel that guilty about it.