When director Atom Egoyan announced late last month he was heading to Hollywood to make a picture, he was referring to Deep Sleep, a Warner Bros. psychological thriller written by Amy Holden Jones (Indecent Proposal, Mystic Pizza) and produced by Robert Shapiro.

Egoyan is looking forward to the new experience and he’s going in with his eyes wide open. ‘I’m going into it knowing that I will have less control, but it’s what I really needed to do after seven independent features here. I’ll either come back refreshed and knowing exactly what it is I’ve got here or (come back) able to modify some things.’

Plans are to go into production as early as the fall and Egoyan hopes to make the feature in Canada. ‘That’s my dream, but it’s not set here and it’s going to be a stretch.’

Scripts from Egoyan’s agents – icm in Los Angeles and Great North in Canada – have been pouring in for about a year and this project stood out. ‘To me, it seems closest in theme and material to my work,’ he says. The film is about a woman lawyer who specializes in euthanasia cases and has a dangerous liaison with a client.

Timing is everything, says Egoyan, and when he wanted to ensure the Warner people saw Exotica, it so happened the film was playing on 40 screens in the greater Los Angeles area.

It’s the first time the filmmaker will be directing a feature that he has not written, although he has done a fair bit of tv work directing other people’s material, including the highly acclaimed mow Gross Misconduct.

‘This is a testing experience for me,’ he says, ‘and I know very few (directors) have final cut. That’s something I would absolutely need with any material of my own, and I would be cautious about putting one of my own scripts through that system.’

Egoyan is happy to be working with Shapiro, particularly because of the producer’s literary sensibilities, culled from having worked as a literary agent for the likes of Mordecai Richler.

Deep Sleep will mean a couple of other projects the director has on the go will be delayed. One is a Canada-France coproduction between Alliance Communications and Georges Benayoun’s Paris-based Ima Films, which unites the substantial talents of Claire Denis (Chocolat), Egoyan and Olivier Assayas (L’eau froide) in a trilogy piece.

The premise is that each filmmaker will create a segment about a foreign woman staying in Paris, but not in order to create an anthology film. The challenge, says Egoyan, is to weave the pieces together to form a cohesive whole.

‘I’ve always been unhappy with anthology films,’ he says. ‘There is something awful about the fact that the films are separateÉit becomes almost a competitive thing.’ The project – as yet untitled – is low budget.

Plans to shoot this summer with some production overseas and some here have been delayed indefinitely.

Egoyan has also written an adaptation for a feature film based on the Russel Banks novel The Sweet Hereafter, which he hopes to pursue after the Warner pic is completed.

He’s excited about the Hollywood gig he confesses, ‘especially if it’s a success.’