Posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 by Angie Han
Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s untitled Osama bin Laden thriller has been sparking political controversy ever since it was announced, with one of the points of contention being its release date. A few months ago, Sony set a date of October 12, 2012 for the picture’s release, irritating some who believed that it would help President Barack Obama during next year’s presidential elections by reminding voters of one of his administration’s most notable achievements.
Partisan bickering over the movie isn’t likely to die down anytime soon, but Sony has announced a schedule shift that should at least make the timing less of an issue. According to new reports, the studio has decided to push back the film, though it’s not known at this point when exactly it’ll get released, or what the motivation was behind the change. More details after the jump.
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The new film from the Oscar-winning team behind The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, may not yet have a title, but it now has a release date. Sony has set the film for October 12, 2012, seemingly positioning the movie squarely as an awards contender. The film, called Killing Bin Laden (or Kill Bin Laden) at one point, was already in the works when Osama Bin Laden was killed earlier this year; at the time it was referred to simply as a small-budget black-ops thriller. A connection to Bin Laden was rumored, but denied. That stance was very quickly reversed, however, when the death of Bin Laden made any project chronicling that killing the object of great desire in Hollywood.
At this point we still know little about the project. Joel Edgerton will reportedly star, and the script is based on the communication Mark Boal has had with the actual Navy SEAL team responsible for killing the terrorist figurehead. We know the third act, originally conceived to represent a failed mission, was rewritten at the last minute, but beyond that specifics are few and far betwee. [Deadline]
Has anyone actually ordered a movie off DirecTV‘s controversial Premium Video On Demand service? Beginning in April, several studios teamed up with the cable provider to offer their movies only two months after they hit theaters for the price of $29.95, much to the dismay of theater owners and filmmakers alike. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “there is persistent buzz that it has fallen flat among consumers.” Still, major filmmakers are continuing to stand up against the service, probably because as the summer season wears on, the selections will get better than the currently, and soon to be, available Sucker Punch or Battle: Los Angeles.
Previously, filmmakers like James Cameron, Michael Bay, Peter Jackson and more signed an open letter written by the National Association of Theater Owners vehemently attacking this service and now Christopher Nolan, Jon Favreau, Quentin Tarantino, M. Night Shyamalan, David Dobkin, Mark Boal and others have also signed the letter. We’ve printed it in the past, but you can once again read it after the jump. Read More »
Here’s a minor update on the film that The Hurt Locker collaborators Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have been rapidly altering in the wake of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The movie once referred to as Kill Bin Laden and Killing Bin Laden is now untitled (we knew that was never going to be the real distribution title) and it looks like Sony will be the company that ends up with distribution rights. Read More »
Looks like the stars aligned for Joel Edgerton. The man who earned new fans though Animal Kingdom after years in the trenches was a possible lead for both The Bourne Legacy and Snow White and the Huntsman. But Bourne slipped his grasp and now he has passed on Snow White and the Huntsman. Instead he’ll be a key part of the film being called Kill Bin Laden, which is the Kathryn Bigelow picture that focuses on a raid intending to take out the Al Qaeda leader. Read More »
So will the inevitable ‘Death of Bin Laden’ film be a gritty indie or big studio effort? As soon as President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, you know that studio execs started calling each other to figure out what properties were already in development that could be reworked as a movie about the killing of Bin Laden.
It was only an hour after the first announcement that the Al Qaeda leader was dead that Deadline ran a piece about two Bin Laden films that are close to a starting point. One is a Paramount film based on the book Jawbreaker, written by CIA operative Gary Bernsten, which is about the first attempt to kill Bin Laden in the initial invasion of Afghanistan that took place right after 9/11.
The other film is Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s movie Kill Bin Laden — that’s the small ‘black ops thriller’ that the two have been prepping parallel to Triple Frontier. We heard months ago that the film might be about the hunt for Bin Laden, and while that news was denied at the time, turns out it was quite correct. And now it looks like Kathryn Bigelow will be the one to bring a Bin Laden movie to the screen first. Read More »
If you think there are too many Snow White films in development, just refresh your memory on the list of films planned around the life of Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks. There’s a documentary to be directed by Alex Gibney, an HBO/BBC co-production based on Raffi Khatchadourian‘s June 7, 2010 New Yorker article called No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency, and a possible film based on Andrew Fowler‘s forthcoming biography of Mr. Assange, called The Most Dangerous Man in the World.
But wait! There are more, including one film that may be written by Mark Boal, and another for which Paul Greengrass is being mentioned as director. Read More »
OK, let’s try this again. About 24 hours ago we told you that the low-budget ($10m or so) ‘international black ops thriller’ by Katherine Bigelow and Mark Boal, her writer on The Hurt Locker, was being repped for international sales by IM Global, and that it might have something to do with the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Mark Boal’s reps quickly squashed that report, but it turns out that an update on the film didn’t come out of nowhere. The film is now fully financed, and will shoot this summer, with Bigelow and Boal’s Triple Frontier to go before cameras afterward. Read More »
