Production History (The Town) The Town
The novel changed hands three times before Affleck took over
Chuck Hogan published Prince of Thieves in 2004. Paramount Pictures had optioned the rights before the book was even in print, with producer Dick Wolf attached. That version stalled. In 2006, director Adrian Lyne brought the project to producer Graham King, who presented it to Warner Bros. Lyne envisioned a three-to-three-and-a-half-hour film in the Martin Scorsese mold, with a budget approaching $90 million and Brad Pitt in the lead role. He considered restructuring the story as an erotic thriller. Warner Bros. balked at the scope and cost, and Lyne departed. (wikipedia, cinemablend)
Peter Craig wrote the first screenplay draft. By 2008, Warner Bros. turned to Ben Affleck, fresh from the critical success of Gone Baby Gone (2007), to direct, star, and co-write. Affleck brought in his high school classmate Aaron Stockard to rework the script. The two drafted a new version in three weeks, stripping Lyne's expansive vision down to a leaner, more action-driven story.
"I didn't know how to direct somebody else's movie. For better or worse, it had to be a movie that I personally researched and understood." — Ben Affleck, The Hollywood Reporter (2010)
Affleck researched Charlestown from the ground up
Although Affleck grew up in nearby Cambridge, he had limited knowledge of Charlestown's insular criminal culture:
"It was like a different world. When I was a kid, I was scared to go there." — Ben Affleck, The Ringer (2020)
Affleck and Stockard conducted extensive fieldwork. They held mass auditions that doubled as research sessions, interviewing hundreds of Charlestown residents about the neighborhood's history, its code of silence, and its relationship to crime:
"We'd get 1,000 people to come in, and out of that there'd be like 20 interesting people whom I'd then do follow-up interviews with." — Ben Affleck, The Ringer (2020)
The production also consulted with the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force in Boston, which provided details about crew-based bank robbery operations and the tactics used to pursue them. Co-writer Stockard described the intensity of the research:
"These guys were really ballsy and brazen. It was exciting to know that we could write these characters big and ambitious." — Aaron Stockard, The Hollywood Reporter (2010)
Producer Chay Carter confirmed that the research extended to working directly with convicted bank robbers:
"We found a couple of real bank robbers that we did real research with." — Chay Carter, The Ringer (2020)
The 170-page script had to lose fifty pages
The initial screenplay ran to 170 pages — roughly fifty pages longer than a standard studio production. The script reduction required cutting entire subplots while preserving the three-thread structure (heist plot, romance, FBI investigation). The novel's movie-theater robbery was dropped entirely, replaced by the streamlined armored-car sequence. The novel's extended romantic subplot between Frawley and Claire was minimized to a few scenes. (hollywoodreporter)
"There was no inner smoothness for me. Fear and anxiety for me is a really good motivator. I worked as hard as I've ever worked on anything, maybe harder, because failure wasn't really an option." — Ben Affleck, The Hollywood Reporter (2010)
Principal photography began in August 2009 across Boston
The production shot for eleven and a half weeks beginning in late August 2009, filming on location throughout Boston and its suburbs. Key locations included:
- Cambridge Merchants Bank: the former MASSBank branch in Melrose, Massachusetts, with the East Boston Savings Bank serving as interior
- Charlestown: the actual neighborhood, including the Monument Laundry Center at 142 Bunker Hill Street (the Laundromat where Doug meets Claire)
- MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole: the real state prison, used for Doug's visit with his father
- North End: Neptune Oyster at 63 Salem Street area, used for the nun-mask armored-car heist
- Fenway Park: thirteen days of filming during the baseball season, an unprecedented level of access
(wikipedia, movie-locations.com)
Fenway Park filming required military-scale coordination
The Fenway Park sequences were the most logistically complex in the production. The crew filmed over thirteen days while the Red Sox were traveling, transforming the ballpark into a combat zone with gunfire effects, stunt driving, and hundreds of extras.
The pyrotechnics disrupted the neighborhood. A wedding ceremony at the park was interrupted by unexpectedly loud gunshots. Former Red Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon complained about noise from street-cleaning equipment at 7 a.m. during team practice periods. (boston.com)
Colin Burch of the Red Sox marketing department described the scale:
"Probably the most intense production that we've had at the ballpark." — Colin Burch, The Ringer (2020)
The Bruins refused their logo for violence scenes
The Boston Bruins declined to allow official team apparel in scenes involving swearing or violence — which, in a film about Charlestown bank robbers, covered most of the running time. Costume designer Susan Matheson and her team worked through the night to create custom hockey jerseys with an approximation of the spoked-B logo:
"I will never forget sitting there with some felt and scissors at 3 or 4 in the morning." — Susan Matheson, The Ringer (2020)
Robert Elswit shot the film in widescreen with a naturalistic palette
Cinematographer Robert Elswit — an Oscar winner for There Will Be Blood (2007) — photographed The Town in 2.40:1 widescreen, giving the narrow Charlestown streets a compressed, claustrophobic quality. The palette is muted and naturalistic: grey stone, brick, overcast skies. The action sequences are shot for spatial clarity, with Elswit and second-unit director Alexander Witt favoring clean, classical compositions over handheld chaos.
"Let's do it as classic as possible." — Alexander Witt, The Ringer (2020)
Editors Dylan Tichenor and Christopher Rouse cut the action with the same emphasis on legibility. Variety praised the result as achieving "an ideal balance between kineticism and clarity." (variety)
Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley scored the film
Composers Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley created the score, marking Gregson-Williams's second collaboration with Affleck after Gone Baby Gone. The score combines a large string section with percussion programming, alternating between propulsive heist cues and slower, more atmospheric passages. Critical reception was mixed — AllMusic noted the music "keep[s] an audience on the edge of its seat," while Filmtracks described it as "a frustratingly underachieving and generic score." (allmusic, filmtracks)
The film premiered at Venice before opening wide
The Town premiered on September 8, 2010, at the Venice Film Festival, building international buzz before its U.S. theatrical release on September 17, 2010. It opened at number one with $23.8 million and ultimately grossed $154 million worldwide against its $37 million budget. (wikipedia)