Flightplan: Ron Batzdorff

Flightplan

RELEASE DATE Sept. 23

WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Jodie Foster (above) returns for her first lead role in more than three years — she could be starring in I Want to Be a Hilton: The Movie and we'd still watch.

THE PREMISE Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a recently widowed aircraft engineer whose little girl vanishes during a transatlantic flight, only to have everyone on the plane tell her she's delusional and paranoid and never brought a child on board.

SOURCE An original screenplay by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray

THE BACK STORY The screenplay was initially written for a male lead but changed for Foster's sake. She notes, ''There's a moment in the movie when Kyle doubts her sanity. It's the kind of doubt I don't think any man would ever have. Women's relationship with their children is this strange symbiotic bond… they are their children.''

BURNING QUESTION Are post-9/11 audiences finally ready for movies where horrible things happen on airplanes?

COME FOR Foster, who's now the queen of thrillers set in claustrophobic spaces, after Panic Room and Contact

STAY FOR Utility player Peter Sarsgaard (who's also in Jarhead this fall), as the one man who might be able to help Kyle find her daughter