Following news that Eon Productions are gearing up to produce a film based on the story of NSA lid-lifter Edward Snowden, arch director of conspiracy fiction Oliver Stone has been signed up to make an adaptation of Luke Harding’s book The Snowden Files. This is going to be a case of journo against journo, with Guardian scribe Harding going source to source against US opposite number Glenn Greenwald (whose No Place To Hide informs the other project). Both were instrumental in bringing Snowden’s revelations to the public but now they are involved in what may well become an undignified race to the box office, with Stone’s take set to open first.
It’s one thing when films about asteroids go into production simultaneously, but do we need dual films about Snowden? Stone certainly has form on the subject of political intrigue, but the man who helmed JFK also brought us SAVAGES, so it’s unclear whether this will be florid or thought-provoking. The blurb for Harding’s tome has the ring of a holiday potboiler, so clues could be gleaned from descriptions such as:
IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: ‘I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.’… Snowden’s story reads like a globe-trotting thriller, from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend on the island of Hawaii carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, and his battle for asylum.
With this vital tale of the relationship between government and the individual becoming the subject of imminent dollar-raking, why not set up another version? Maybe Judd Apatow could bring us the exploits of Steve Carell’s Snowden and his comedic fumblings on the way to global exposure. And talking of exposure, there’s a really cool sequence where Snowden gets his pants ripped off after the button gets jammed in a Xerox! A flippant view perhaps, but there is a danger here that Stone could be queering the pitch when what is required is an arrow, clear and true, to the heart of this weightiest of matters.
Source: IndieWire
