Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in an upcoming Oliver Stone film. While the pairing had been rumored in September, the director now confirms Gordon-Levitt will star.
In a recent interview with RIA Novosti, a Russian news site, Stone said Snowden “will be played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt… a very good actor, popular with the young people.”
While the film is still untitled, Stone did confirm it will be based on two books, Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, and Anatoly Kucherena’s Time of The Octopus. Stone purchased the rights to both books in order to adapt them into the film. “We are working on the script. We hope to shoot early next year, we’ve been working on it for almost a year now… and we’re very pleased it’s coming along,” Stone said.
Stone also met with Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russian, to discuss the project. Snowden became infamous in 2013 for leaking NSA secrets regarding their surveillance initiatives.
Current events re not unfamiliar territory for Oliver Stone, who won an Oscar for Best Directo in 1986 for Platoon. Stone has also directed W., a film about President George W. Bush while he was still in office, and he also helmed World Trade Center, which focused on the September 11 Terror Attacks. This film could begin shooting in 2015.
Before Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Edward Snowden, he can be seen in Robert Zemeckis’ film The Walk, as well as an untitled Christmas Eve project to be directed by Jonathan Levine.
[photo credit: elaine a]