Director Alejandro Inarritu Barely Beat the Recession With New Film

As the world braced for financial disaster, Oscar-nominated director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu was saved by fateful timing.

Inarritu, the maker of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, began to shoot his new movie Biutiful starring Javier Bardem just as a scene-stealing recession strangled the film industry.

"Fortunately, my film was one of the last-limit projects greenlighted," Inarritu told WalletPop in a recent interview. "One month later, this film couldn't happen. It was greenlit in a completely different world. I was lucky I wasn't stopped."