Unlike last night’s development, what we have, here, is a Leonardo DiCaprio-related story free of heavy sighs or improperly channeled frustration — and it has direct connections to legally dodgy government surveillance! With the damning revelations from NSA leaker Edward Snowden having been strewn across so many headlines in recent months, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood would use this to wring cinematic drama — thus, ScreenDaily report that a picture (more or less) concerning his efforts, though only beginning to circulate through Hollywood, is already of interest to the actor and his company, Appian Way, which is itself bound by a contract with Warner Bros.
So, yes, a recent enemy of the U.S. government could, indeed, be depicted through the efforts of a major Hollywood studio within two years’ time, and it’s all thanks to Glenn Greenwald. The Guardian reporter, who released first pieces of NSA surveillance in June, is currently penning a book, to be published this spring, detailing what its publisher describes as “new revelations exposing the extraordinary cooperation of private industry and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s programme, both domestically and abroad.” A deal would give the eventual buyer rights to that text, though how the possessing party utilizes it goes unstated, for now; when plenty of feature-worthy narratives are likely to be contained within those pages, making a choice might not be so easy.
Speaking of both DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese films that were delayed (how long it will take our hearts to mend), below is a pair of unused posters for Shutter Island (via Film.com):
Do NSA controversies strike you as ample dramatic material for a motion picture?