Untitled Bin Laden Film Under Fire

Apparently, Kathryn Bigelow, the irrelevant director that rolled eyebrows when she won a rather politicized Academy Award for The Hurt Locker, and Sony Pictures are developing a film about the mission to hunt and kill Bin Laden.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/news#ni13408151

Sony Pictures has announced that it will release the untitled Osama Bin Laden film, written and directed by "The Hurt Locker" team of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, on October 12th. This date means that the studio is hoping that their movie will become a contender during the Oscars.

Bigelow and Boal were working on "Kill Bin Laden" before the Navy SEAL Team 6 tracked and killed the Al-Qaeda leader. The story was supposed to be about an unsuccessful attempt to get Bin Laden, but that all changed once news broke that he was dead.

Annapurna Films immediately stepped in to fund the film and Boal got to work altering the script to include the death of Bin Laden. Buyers then emerged at the Cannes Film Festival, with Sony signing on to distribute.

Read more: http://www.worstpreviews.com/headlin...#ixzz1UhocdPpW

Rep. Peter King has openly called out the project as being detrimental to national security, asking for an investigation to be opened on the project, as it is too soon for the impact of these events to fully understood or capitalized upon in the ongoing war on terror.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni13922178/

Congressman Peter King has stated his reason for asking for an investigation. The letter appears below the original text.

BREAKING: New York-based congressman Peter King has called for an investigation into the Obama Administration's cooperation with the untitled movie that The Hurt Locker's Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are making about Navy SEAL Team 6's hunt and eventual kill of 9/11 terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. The request came after a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd reporting that the film -- which was acquired at auction by Sony Pictures before a script was completed -- received cooperation and help in describing a mission that was classified. The filmmakers have just released the following statement:

“Our upcoming film project about the decade long pursuit of Bin Laden has been in the works for many years and integrates the collective efforts of three administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, as well as the cooperative strategies and implementation by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, the dangerous work of finding the world’s most wanted man was carried out by individuals in the military and intelligence communities who put their lives at risk for the greater good without regard for political affiliation. This was an American triumph, both heroic, and non-partisan and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise.” Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal.

The film is still casting up and Sony will release it Oct. 12, 2012, which falls smack in the middle of the Presidential election and likely has much to do with the complaint. The night that President Obama announced that bin Laden was killed, Deadline reported that Bigelow and Boal were already moving fast on a film that was being called Killing Bin Laden, one that focused on an earlier attempt by the Navy SEALs to finish off the Al-Qaeda leader. Deadline noted that they quite possibly had the hottest project in Hollywood, one that every studio in town was interested in. Megan Ellison's Annapurna signed on to finance the film and Sony Pictures bought it at auction during the Cannes Film Festival. Clearly, they had already done a lot of research on the ground because they didn't take that long to change the movie and add a satisfying ending. Boal has a foreign correspondent background, and he developed and used contacts in the military and the Middle East to shape The Hurt Locker.

The White House has knocked down the notion that the filmmakers were getting tipped secrets, with a spokesman calling it "ridiculous" and saying the filmmakers got no preferential treatment. This all sounds like a steaming pile of partisan politics to me, but it certainly will get a lot of attention. The military has made a practice of cooperating on gung-ho pictures in the past, lending know-how and making military hardware available on movies ranging from Pearl Harbor to Top Gun. Few pols have complained until now.

There will be plenty of upcoming appeals for cooperation by military mission films taking shape, including the upcoming Pete Berg-directed Lone Survivor, a fact-based tale about heroic Navy SEALs who struggled to survive after their covert mission in Afghanistan was compromised and they were forced to fight their way out of an ambush by Taliban forces. And let's not forget about Act of Valor, a film completed about a Navy SEAL mission that featured a cast of actual Navy SEALs re-creating their exploits. That movie Relativity Media will release next President's Day weekend. So it doesn't seem like Bigelow and Boal are getting anything out of the ordinary. Divulging classified matter is a serious matter, but the film is a drama, not a documentary, and the facts behind the successful hunt of bin Laden have been widely reported by now.

“I would hope that as we face the continued threat from terrorism, the House Committee on Homeland Security would have more important topics to discuss than a movie," White House Press secretary Jay Carney said.

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Kathryn Bigelow is in way over her head and I think Sony Pictures is making a boneheaded move. There is absolutely no way any film this soon after bin Laden's assassination is going to be revealing of any interesting details. It's just going to be a regurgitation of official stories which aren't even formative of the full picture or furthermore, the extent of the Pakistani intelligence service's involvement in protecting him and the epic amount of playing both sides of the fence the Pakistani military is engaged in.

I would far rather that Hollywood back off this sort of project for at least 10 more years as more information comes out and the war on terror is drawn down. We'll inevitably get a better, more realistic, detail oriented picture of what really happened. I really don't want to go watch some entirely fictional garbage on the subject like Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, which was extremely overrated. I mean come on, the plot was about 3 soldiers in an IEDD unit going gungho and doing stupid crap without the rest of their platoon. Which NEVER happens in the tightly regulated command structure.

No, I don't expect any movie to be 100% accurate, but it should remain plausibly truthful and honestly, at this point, we aren't ready for a movie about this. How the hell is a relatively minor studio going to garner the resources or distributors necessary for the epic scope of such a project, spanning four countries and 10 years, going off of conflicting data, covering the political mess his evasion created, the war on terror drifting badly, his involvement with other cells, his relationship with Pakistan, and just what intricate plot the intelligence team had to weave in order to get reliable information to conduct the raid, as well as the subsequent prosecution of the 5 men in Pakistan by the corrupt military apparatus who cooperated with the American military to conduct the raid.

A movie about this subject could be so good and epic, but really Bigelow is a bad choice for it. She doesn't have much of a resume and Sony doesn't exactly have the reputation of producing well informed movies. So I actually kind of hope that the DHS blacklists the project and delays it until the war is pretty much over. It took a long time for Apocalypse Now to come out and completely floor people with its portrayal of Vietnam and a LOT of painstaking research, dedication, and brilliant writing.

Hmm, 10 years seems like a rather long time for a film about this. 2-3 years seems like a good amount of time for facts to arise.

Nevermind, that made an ass out of myself
But I think that if someone wants to make a movie, let 'em do it. It's for pure entertainment with a few facts thrown in here and there.

I have a problem with this. There are conflicting accounts on whether the raiders were prepared to take him alive or it was a pure assassination. One of the women in the house even claimed, IIRC, that the Zeals killed him post-capture. She could be lying, but then I imagine special forces guys as being a tight-lipped bunch.

Well I think we all knew this would come eventually, but I agree it's entirely too soon. But it's a matter of profit for the studios and people involved. The way they see it they want to capitalize on it before someone else does and that's the real issue at hand. Has nothing to do with paying tribute or anything like that. Plus this will only upset people in JSOC who are not happy about all of this publicity and want to fade back into obscurity. Very irritating considering their ongoing operations and so forth. I wouldn't mind a film like this, but like you said maybe ten years down the road. But then, I can't stand just about all the movies that have been put out about Iraq which are just ridiculous in most cases-- Bigalow's Hurt Locker being a major one. I don't know how that garnered such success; it was really a movie and a bad depiction of what goes on over there.

I enjoy spy thrillers and so forth and the whole hunt for Bin Laden certainly has the chops for that, making it even cooler because it's based on real life, but again it's just too soon. I wouldn't mind more movies like Spy Game or Body of Lies, though.

Honestly this all just sounds like a cheap way for Obama to get a poll boost right before the 2012 election.

Wouldn't be the first time politically motivated movie releases were planned in such a way. Oliver Stone's W. got a ton of flak in '08 basically the same thing.

less talk, more moviemaking

and it better not suck, like that jessica lynch movie.

I wonder who would play Hilary Clinton...

Originally Posted by hellheaven1987

I wonder who would play Hilary Clinton...

edward norton,
amazing actor; this will be his way of getting an oscar, and not like james franco

Originally Posted by hellheaven1987

I wonder who would play Hilary Clinton...

Tenner bets its Hellen "derp" Mirren.

I want borat in it, make it a comedy

Originally Posted by saglam2000

I want borat in it, make it a comedy

Hes doing a movie right now based on one of Saddam Husseins love novels where he plays Saddam (not joking).

Originally Posted by Kanaric

Hes doing a movie right now based on one of Saddam Husseins love novels where he plays Saddam (not joking).

Lolwut? I'm checking this.


EDIT: Holy ing christ, you're right!

Originally Posted by Future Filmmaker

Lolwut? I'm checking this.


EDIT: Holy ing christ, you're right!

HAHHAHHAHA!

Seriously!?

My god!