Given the rate at which he produces them, it sometimes seems as if nobody enjoys documentaries quite as much as Alex Gibney — but perhaps the man has finally run out of subjects to cover. Whatever the case may be, he’s gone to fiction with a new project: Deadline report on The Action, a ’70s-set political thriller scripted by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Informant!) that concerns the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, “eight anti-war activists who stole and made public classified FBI documents that exposed J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign of spying on and blackmailing troublemakers.”
Spoiler alert: they were never caught, but brought to light in 2014 when The Washington Post‘s Betty Medsger wrote The Burglary: The Discovery Of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. The general story all sounds like the basis for a documentary he’d have ready by the fall, yet here we are with a shift — one that has us curious. Anonymous Content and Participant Media are supporting the project.
Speaking of migrations, THR tell us Goodnight Mommy helmers Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz (themselves filmmakers who made the transition from documentary to fiction) will make their U.S.-studio debut with The Fortress. A pitch and the support of producer Michael De Luca have brought the duo into orbit with Universal; what we know is that it concerns “a group of refugees hidden aboard a container ship who discover their passage to safety is not what it seems.”