‘Citzenfour’ story to get the Oliver Stone treatment
NSA contractor Edward Snowden's epic leak of classified U.S. intelligence files is the subject of Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated, you-are-there doc, ‘Citizenfour.’ Now Oliver Stone, no stranger to controversial politically-themed films), is planning a fictionalized account, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden.
The presumptive front-runner in the best documentary feature race in the 2015 Academy Awards, Laura Poitras' Citizenfour offers a gripping, you-are-there account of security contractor Edward Snowden's fateful decision to share top secret intelligence files with the media and the world at large. A whistleblower, or a traitor, depending on who you're talking to, Snowden's story is the stuff of a gripping international thriller. And now Oliver Stone, the director with a string of controversial takes on recent American history -- JFK, Nixon, W., World Trade Center – plans to bring the Snowden story to the big screen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been cast as Snowden, the intelligence and security contractor who holes up in a Hong Kong hotel while Poitras films him angsting over the release of top secret documents, as investigative reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill look on.
Joining Gordon-Levitt in Stone's dramatization, adapted from the books Time of the Octopus by Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, and The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding, are Shailene Woodley as Snowden's longtime girlfriend, Lindsay Mills; Melissa Leo as filmmaker Poitras; , Zachary Quinto (Spock in the Star Trek reboots) as Greenwald, and Tom Wilkinson as the British journalist MacAskill. Expect a 2016 release.