Edward Snowden to Receive Hollywood Makeover With Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Written by: Cadence

Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be taking on the role of whistleblower Edward Snowden in a forthcoming biopic. Oliver Stone will be writing and directing The Snowden Files.

The movie will be based on ‘The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man’, written by Guardian journalist Luke Harding, and ‘Time of the Octopus’, a novel by Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kycherena.

The movie is currently in pre-production stages, with release scheduled for 2016. It is likely filming will begin at the end of 2014 or early 2015.

Former NSA contractor Snowden is currently living in Russia as part of a temporary asylum agreement. He faces a 30-year prison sentence if he returns to the US, for releasing details of large scale surveillance undertaken by intelligence services. The movie will likely cover Snowden’s revelations of the government’s PRISM program, which used clandestine methods to harvest communication records from citizens across the US. 

Actor Gordon-Levitt has previously undertaken key roles in The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Inception and Lincoln. Stone is experienced in working in the political genre, having directed biopics Nixon and W. about former presidents Nixon and George W. Bush. He also directed documentary series The Untold History of the United States, which looked beyond the official versions of key events since WWII, including the War on Terror.

Fans of Snowden will be hoping the film is more truthful than 2013’s The Fifth Estate, an adaptation of the Wikileaks story with Julian Assange portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch. The movie was condemned by the website itself, which leaked a script and released a 4,000 word memo exposing its biased inaccuracies.

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Sources

http://www.thewrap.com/oliver-stones-edward-snowden-film-starring-joseph-gordon-levitt-goes-to-auction/

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/22/joseph-gordon-levitt-edward-snowden-oliver-stone-nsa-whistleblower-film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774114/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_1

http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/wikileaks-dreamworks-memo.html#about