More than a year since information analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified information from the NSA (National Security Agency), for which the U.S. government dubbed him a traitor to his country, forcing him into exile, there’s still a lot of interest in his story.
Laura Poitras’ documentary CITIZENFOUR will premiere at the New York Film Festival next month before its release by RADiUS-TWC on October 24, and none other than filmmaker and (accused conspiracy nut) Oliver Stone is making his own narrative feature film currently called The Snowden Files.
Deadline is now reporting that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the top contender to play the role of Edward Snowden in Stone’s film, which hopes to start shooting in Munich this December.
Stone and his producing partner Moritz Borman bought the screen rights for “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World’s Most Wanted Man,” from Guardian journalist Luke Harding, although the film is said to be based on the novel “Time of the Octopus” from Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, which mainly deals with Snowden’s time in Russia hoping to get asylum while the United States was demanding his extradition to potentially face jail time for his crimes.
Gordon-Levitt recently finished shooting Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, playing high-wire artist Philippe Petit, whose tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1973 was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire. Currently, he’s reuniting with Seth Rogen and director Jonathan Levine (50/50) for an untitled X-Mas comedy that’s filming in New York City. Both projects will be released by Sony Pictures in 2015.
Last year, DreamWorks released the Julian Assange drama The Fifth Estate, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which was a critical and commercial failure despite its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, so in some ways, Stone’s movie has that working against it except that it’s a far more current story.
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