The Italian Job (2003 film) by director F. Gary Gray as "inspired by the original." Gray, Powers and Powers, and executive producer James Dyer identified the most prominent similarities as the trio of Mini Coopers used by the thieves, as well as the titular heist involving the theft of gold bullion. Some sequences of the film were storyboarded and previsualized by Gray before production began. Gray had been interested in working with Wahlberg since seeing his performance in "Boogie Nights" (1997). After reading the script for "The Italian Job", Gray contacted Wahlberg, who "fell in love with it" after reading it himself. Green was also
The Italian Job (2003 film) 2003. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $19,457,944, ranking at #3. Paramount re-released the film on August 29, and by the time its theatrical release closed in November 2003, the film had grossed $106,128,601 in the United States and Canada and $69,941,570 overseas—$176,070,171 worldwide. It was the highest-grossing film produced by Paramount in 2003. Based on 177 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, "The Italian Job" has an overall approval rating of 73%, with a weighted average score of 6.4/10. By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 68 out