Joseph Gordon Levitt is up for the role of Edward Snowden

Joseph Gordon Levitt will star in the new biopic about Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who leaked thousands of files from the agency in 2013. The negotiations have not yet started but the production on “The Snowden Files” will start this year or in the beginning of 2015. 

Oliver Stone is writing and directing this film named after the book “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man” by the Guardian journalist Luke Harding. The film is to be based on two books, the one by Luke Harding and the other from Snowden’s lawyer Anatoky Kucherena named “Time of the Octopus”. Oliver Stone recently acquired the screen rights to Anatoly’s book also.

Another film on the same topic, named “No Place to Hide” is coming to the cinemas by James Bond Producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, which is inspired by a freelance journalist Glenn Greenwald’s book. Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents to Greenwald in 2013. It is expected that Oliver Stone’s version of the story will hit the cinemas first.

Edward Snowden is a former NSA employee who leaked the mass government surveillance documents through the Guardian last year. His revelations sparked a global outbreak of anger. He has now been granted temporary asylum in Russia and will have to face 30 years in prison if he returns to the United States.

Joseph Gordon, 33, has successfully worked his way through many critically acclaimed movies during his Hollywood career. He starred in Rian Johnson’s “Looper” and the batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises”. He has a comedy drama “500 Days of Summer” and “Don Jon” to his credit also. He himself directed the former movie. Gordon is also up for the Phillipe Petit biopic “The Walk”, about his successful crossing of the World Trade Centre’s twin towers in August 1974.

On the other hand, writer and director Oliver Stone is known for his experience with biographical political films. He directed “JFK” about Kennedy’s assassination, “The Watergate Break-in” about Nixon, “Platoon”, “Born on the Fourth Of July” and “Heaven & Earth” about the Vietnam conflict and “W” about the Bush administration’s war on terror.

Political movies create hype in the media every time. We are looking forward to the movie to know more about the policies of the NSA and to see how much justice Stone and Gordon can do to the cause of this movie.

Source: Guardian