Who’s the hottest new director in Hollywood?

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If you’re an agent who represents the hottest new director in Hollywood, it’s never quiet in your office because your phone never stops ringing. Just ask Robert Newman, the veteran Endeavor agent who represents a host of top directors, including ‘Slumdog Millionaire’s’ Danny Boyle. With Boyle poised to collect an Oscar statuette or two Sunday, you’d think Newman would be basking in the Boyle spotlight. But as it turns out, Newman’s hottest director is someone almost no one outside of Hollywood has ever heard of: Pierre Morel, an obscure French cinematographer turned director who as recently as six years ago was shooting second-unit footage in Paris for Nancy Meyers’ ‘Something’s Gotta Give.’

Now Morel is suddenly a filmmaking star. While no one was looking, Morel’s latest film, the Liam Neeson-starring revenge thriller ‘Taken,’ has made more than $150 million around the world, $82 million of it in the U.S., making it the second-highest-grossing film of 2009 after ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop.’ The critics were largely appalled by the film’s pulpy, down-’n-dirty feel, with the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis calling it an ‘exploitative throwaway’ and the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane dismissing it as ‘trash.’ But in Hollywood, Morel struck a different chord: Working on a very modest budget (roughly $25 million) he made a propulsive action movie that breathed new life into an old genre -- the revenge thriller.

Without any disrespect to Neeson, it clearly wasn’t the 56-year-old Irish actor, best known for his ensemble work, who opened the movie (which was distributed by Fox). It was Morel’s vivid, visceral filmmaking that brought a swarm of young male moviegoers to see the dramatic, often brutally violent actioner. ‘The film reminded me a lot of ‘Ransom,’ which was the old Hollywood, big-budget-style version of this movie,’ said New Line production chief Toby Emmerich. ‘But ‘Taken’ is a lot closer to Clint Eastwood than Ron Howard. It clearly didn’t cost very much, and since the story is so predictable -- I guess if I were an academic I’d call it the captivity narrative -- if you’re looking for the key to the film’s success, you’d have to chalk it up to the great filmmaking. On screen, everything is always moving. Morel is just an exciting filmmaker.’

Morel is coming to town this weekend, and even though it’s the height of Oscar season, Newman hasn’t had any trouble lining up a string of meetings with the likes of Emmerich, the Weinsteins and top production executives at several other studios, including Warners, MGM, Paramount and Lionsgate. Other Morel fans include Media Rights Capital’s Modi Wiczyk, Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh, Universal’s David Linde and producer Neal Moritz. In fact, Moritz, who saw ‘District B13,’ Morel’s 2004 debut film, has already attached Morel to ‘Hunter Killer,’ a submarine thriller project.

Why is Morel exactly the kind of filmmaker Hollywood loves? Keep reading:

‘It’s all about the heat,’ says Moritz, a producer who makes precisely the kind of popcorn-style action fare that would be a perfect fit for Morel, including such hits as ‘Vantage Point,’ ‘I Am Legend’ and ‘The Fast and the Furious’ franchise. ‘Pierre did the kind of movie that when it works everyone notices -- an action picture that didn’t cost a lot of money, but plays both at home and abroad, which means he really can reach a broad audience.’

The film’s potent international appeal is what got everyone’s attention, since the international market is one of the few remaining growth businesses in Hollywood. ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop’ may have made more money in the U.S., but as a comedy with a TV actor in the starring role, it will barely make a dent overseas. Studio execs are far more enamored by filmmakers like Morel, whose highly visual cinematic language translates into every moviegoing culture. It hardly matters that film critics were horrified by what Time’s Richard Corliss calls the film’s ‘torture porn’ premise, which features Neeson as a former spy who launches a one-man war against a ruthless gang of thugs who’ve abducted his daughter. Like football and hip-hop, action movies are at home nearly everywhere around the globe.

‘Critics just have an inherent bias against vigilante, outside-the-law story lines that are unapologetic about having truly good guys and bad guys,’ says Newman. ‘It must make them uncomfortable. Don Siegel didn’t get good reviews for ‘Dirty Harry’ and Tony Scott didn’t get good reviews for ‘Man on Fire,’ yet those are both incredibly great pieces of filmmaking.’

Newman saw Morel’s ‘District B13’ and called the filmmaker cold. He says Morel is eager to work in Hollywood on the right project. ‘He doesn’t want to do sequels or stories that are tongue-in-cheek or self-referential,’ says Newman. ‘He likes emotional stories with strong characters. I’d love to see him do the kind of movies we’ve seen from Ridley and Tony Scott or Michael Mann, anything with the kind of intensity you see in their films.’

Both of Morel’s films as a director were produced by Luc Besson, whose early films as a director were clearly inspired by an earlier generation of Hollywood thrillers. But while Besson often got rave reviews, he was too quirky to become a reliable A-list studio director. Morel seems to have more in common with the Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, whose ‘Wanted’ was such a huge hit last summer that Bekmambetov quickly catapulted to the top page of every studio’s action director list. Morel isn’t far behind. He has the lean-’n’-mean cinematic style that turns heads in Hollywood, a town that is full of respect for directors who win Oscars but loves filmmakers who make kick-ass thrillers even more.