Update: The Wrap confirms that Spielberg will not be making a film based on this material. You can now go about your day.
Though Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty was the first project to focus on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, it looks like she hasn’t cornered the market on the topic just yet. Matt Bissonnette, a former Navy SEAL who wrote his own eyewitness account of Osama bin Laden’s death, is now talking to Steven Spielberg about adapting his upcoming book into an action film. [New York Post]
According to the publisher, Dutton, Bissonnette was “one of the first men through the door on the third floor” of bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout and witnessed his death. He later wrote the book under the pen name Mark Owen, with the title No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden, which will be released Sept. 11. NY Post’s sources say that he has met with HBO’s Richard Plepler and is still talking to Dreamworks and to Spielberg about adapting the forthcoming material.
If Spielberg or any other interested party takes him up on the material, Bissonnette’s story will join other Bin Laden movies included Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, starring Scott Adkins, Joel Edgerton, Jessica Chastain and Taylor Kinney, and the John Stockwell-directed, Weinstein Company-distributed Code Name Geronimo, both of which focus on the extensive manhunt for the infamous terrorist. Sony is releasing their film this later year, with Geronimo soon to follow.
Should this book be adapted, it could come with some interesting buzz. After the book announcement, Fox News broke the story that Mark Owen was actually Bissonnette, a 36-year-old newly retired SEAL, prompting special operations chief Adm. Bill McRaven to note that the author could be prosecuted for “revealing sensitive and classified information that could cause US forces harm.” Spielberg has a pretty busy schedule with Lincoln wrapping up and Robopocalyse, the Tintin sequels and a myriad of other materials he’s expressed interest in coming up soon after. However, given the potential controversy around Bissonnette’s story and the huge interest in Bin Laden films, it could be worth his while.
Do you want to see a Spielberg-directed Bin Laden film?