Director Finds Stretching Budgets as Easy as 1, 2, 3

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Byline: Dann Gire

These days, Michael Hoffman lives in Idaho with wife Samantha and two-year-old Atticus, already a Chicago Bulls fan.

"He loves the graphics at the beginning when the animated bull runs through the streets of Chicago and goes into the United Center," Hoffman said.

In his spare time, Hoffman directs movies. He recently completed his period comic drama "Restoration" starring Robert Downey Jr. as a debauched 17th century English surgeon who faces love and the plague.

The movie's budget amounted to a mere $18.5 million, yet it looks comparable to a movie with twice that cost. "It had to do with many things, one of them being the …