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) start of the 21st century, along with "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1999) and "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), both of which were also remakes of 1960s heist films. In describing his theory of a "team film" genre, film scholar Dr. Jeremy Strong writes that "The Italian Job" could be categorized as such, along with "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), "The Great Escape" (1963), "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), and more recently "The Usual Suspects" (1995) and "" (1996). He states that a team film involves a group working towards a particular objective. However, goal-orientation is a widely shared plot attribute of many texts and