On Friday, October 27, Paramount Pictures releases the dark comedy Lucky Numbers directed by Nora Ephron and starring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow. Travolta plays a famous television weatherman who plots a lottery scheme with the station's lotto girl (played by Kudrow) only to have the whole plan spin out of control. Recently, Ephron and Kudrow sat down to talk about their new film which they hope audiences everywhere will enjoy.

"The script was sent to me last summer," said Ephron of her initial involvement with Lucky Numbers which was jointly produced by Paramount and France's Studiocanal. "Normally I get sent romantic comedies that need rewrites. I was really excited that it was so different for me," explained the director who has hit box office gold with successes like Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Michael which also starred Travolta. Based on a real-life event that rocked the Pennsylvania State Lottery in 1980, Lucky Numbers was scripted by Adam Resnick (Cabin Boy) and brought to the screen by Ephron.

With Travolta semi-attached, Nora Ephron began envisioning who could play opposite the Hollywood A-lister. "I got to this woman's part. I thought ... who could play this part? This lotto ball girl is like a psychopath but so funny," reminisced the director. Lisa Kudrow, who had worked on screenwriter Delia Ephron's film Hanging Up immediately came to mind. The Friends star recalls "Before I read the script, I had gotten a call from Nora saying 'I'm directing this movie, it's the best script, it's got a great character for a woman, and John Travolta is the star.' So THEN i read the script!"

Set in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, much of the shooting was on-location in the capital city. Ephron enjoyed her time there stating "It's not like big cities like New York or Los Angeles where they're irritated that you're there. You go to places like Harrisburg and Sacramento [the film's other location] and they are totally deluded. They're thrilled! They stay up all night hoping John Travolta would come out and sign autographs." Kudrow adds "In Pennsylvania, people would come up with banners and there were hundreds of people that would come to see him and they would want his autograph and he would sign almost all of them."

Of course not every film with a big star attached becomes a box office hit. The road to the film's theatrical release began when Paramount announced a July 14, 2000 release date for the comedy which put it head-to-head with the younger-skewing behemoth X-Men and just a week ahead of the adult-skewing What Lies Beneath. Each of those blockbusters grossed over $150M. The R-rated lotto comedy was originally called Numbers but due to the fact that the title was already registered, Lucky Numbers became the new moniker.

Ephron disagrees with press reports that concluded Paramount delayed the release of Lucky Numbers in order to distance it from Travolta's critically-panned megaflop Battlefield Earth. "The reason the movie was postponed was that it had just finished shooting," she explains. "They said we want the movie in July and I said well you're not gonna get it. They said we're just gonna announce it and I said don't announce it 'cause it's not gonna be ready. I don't cut a movie in eight weeks. So they announced it and eight weeks later I said it wasn't ready and so they pushed it and everyone said 'Oh! It's because of Battlefield Earth' but it was never gonna be ready." Ephron also feels that the movie is not a summer movie to begin with and is happy with the autumn date.

With the October 27 date, Lucky Numbers will now roll the dice in a marketplace where comedies like Meet the Parents and Bedazzled are bringing in the ticket dollars. But Kudrow is confident that moviegoers will line up and enjoy the film saying "I think the movie is real funny. John Travolta is so good and so funny. People are interested in seeing John be so funny." Paramount agrees and will be hoping that the film's box office numbers will come up lucky too.