Traffic (2000 Film)

Traffic (2000 film)

Traffic is a 2000 American crime drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Stephen Gaghan. It explores the illegal drug trade from a number of perspectives: a user, an enforcer, a politician and a trafficker. Their stories are edited together throughout the film, although some of the characters do not meet each other. The film is an adaptation of the British Channel 4 television series Traffik.

20th Century Fox, the original financiers of the film, demanded Harrison Ford play a leading role and that significant changes to the screenplay be made. Soderbergh refused and proposed the script to other major Hollywood studios, but it was rejected because of the three-hour running time and the subject matter. USA Films, however, liked the project from the start and offered the film-makers more money than Fox. Soderbergh operated the camera himself and adopted a distinctive cinematography tint for each story so that audiences could tell them apart.

Traffic was critically acclaimed and earned numerous awards, including four Oscars for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also a commercial success with a worldwide total of $207.5 million, well above its estimated $46 million budget.

In 2004, USA Network ran a miniseries—also called Traffic—based on the American film and the earlier British television series.