Joseph Gordon Levitt Horizontal - H 2014
AP ImagesJoseph Gordon-Levitt is in early talks to play Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone‘s forthcoming movie about the NSA leaker, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Stone is set to write and direct a movie based on two books: The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, written by journalist Luke Harding, and the novel Time of the Octopus, written by Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena.
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Stone will also produce the film alongside Moritz Berman and Eric Kopeloff. Production was originally set to begin before the end of the year.
Harding’s book deals with reports based on Snowden’s disclosures in The Guardian while Kucherena’s fictional story focuses on an American whistleblower, who after being threatened by his government and waiting for a decision on his request for Russian asylum, spends weeks at the Moscow airport.
Stone’s film isn’t the only Snowden-focused story in the works. Laura Poitras‘ CITIZENFOUR documentary is set to screen at the New York Film Festival, and Sony has optioned the film rights to Glenn Greenwald‘s No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.
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Sony is in the process of finding a high-profile writer to tackle that adaptation.
Greenwald and Poitras were among the initial group of people who saw and reported on Snowden’s top-secret NSA documents.
Gordon-Levitt recently wrapped production on Robert Zemeckis‘ The Walk, playing Philippe Petit, the high-wire artist who famously walked between the World Trade Center towers. He’s also filming an untitled Christmas Eve movie in which he reunites with his 50/50 co-star Seth Rogen and that movie’s director, Jonathan Levine. Gordon-Levitt most recently appeared in the Sin City sequel, A Dame to Kill For.
Gordon-Levitt is repped by WME and attorney Karl Austen.
