Phone Booth is a 2002 American psychological thriller film directed by Joel Schumacher, produced by David Zucker and Gil Netter, written by Larry Cohen and starring Colin Farrell, Forest Whitaker, Katie Holmes, Radha Mitchell, and Kiefer Sutherland.

Stuart Shepard is an arrogant and dishonest New York City publicist who has been planning an affair with a client, Pamela McFadden, behind the back of his wife Kelly.

While in Times Square, Stuart uses a public phone booth to contact Pamela, allowing him to avoid detection by Kelly.

NYPD Captain Ed Ramey seals off the area and negotiates to make Stuart leave the booth, but he refuses.

Stuart secretly uses his cell phone to call Kelly, allowing her to overhear his conversation with the caller; she quietly informs Ramey of this.

The police fire upon Stuart, while a SWAT team breaks into the room that the caller was tracked to, only to find a rifle and a man's corpse.

The real caller passes by, warning Stuart that if his newfound honesty does not last, he will return, before disappearing into the crowd, while the pay phone rings again.

In the 1960s, Larry Cohen pitched Alfred Hitchcock an idea for a film which took place in real-time, entirely within the confines of a telephone booth.

Hitchcock liked the idea, but the project did not move forward, because the two men were unable to devise a plot which explained why the action had to be restricted to one location.

[2] Creative Artists Agency signed a contract with Cohen and the script appealed to several A-list actors, such as Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Mel Gibson, Robin Williams, Anthony Hopkins, and Nicolas Cage; directors placed in contention included Gibson, Steven Spielberg, the Hughes brothers, and Michael Bay.

The exact location of the phone booth in the film is the corner of West 5th Street and Frank Court, given away by the black gate in the background.

However, in October 2002, the Beltway sniper attacks occurred in the Washington, D.C., area,[7] prompting 20th Century Fox to delay the release of the film to April 4, 2003.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Quick pacing and Farrell's performance help make Phone Booth a tense nail-biter.

"[11] Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine criticized the film for not having enough material even for its relatively short length, and wrote: "Gussied up with a host of filmmaking tricks in an attempt to keep things lively, this intensely acted little exercise just doesn't have enough going for it, with the exception of gradually growing interest in lead Colin Farrell.