Tradecraft: Nineties Surveillance Movies Become Modern TV Shows

Two fun and fairly beloved Nineties caper movies about surveillance experts are being rebooted as rival TV series. Deadline reports that NBC is developing a hacker drama inspired, no doubt, by the timely post-Wikileaks success of USA's Mr. Robot, but ostensibly based on Phil Alden Robinson's classic 1992 movie Sneakers. The film starred Robert Redford as master hacker Martin Bishop (though I can't recall if it actually used the word "hacker"), who leads a Mission: Impossible-style team of surveillance experts as they conduct fake heists to test companies' security. They become embroiled in spyjinks when they're blackmailed into recovering that favorite espionage MacGuffin, a "black box" for the NSA. Bishop's arch enemy turns out to have a personal connection to his past, a set-up that lends itself well to a network series. The movie's producers Walter Parkes (who also co-wrote it) and Laurie MacDonald will executive produce the series along with Mentalist executive producer Tom Szentgyorgyi.

Meanwhile, according to Variety, ABC is taking a crack at Tony Scott's 1998 action movie Enemy of the State. The film's producer Jerry Bruckheimer is on board to produce the show, which will be written by Morgan Foehl, who mined similar territory in the 2015 movie Blackhat. The trade reports that the series is conceived not as a remake, but a sequel to the film. "Based off the movie, the show is set two decades after the original film. When an elusive NSA spy is charged with leaking classified intelligence, an idealistic female attorney must partner with a hawkish FBI agent to stop a global conspiracy that threatens to expose dark secrets and personal mysteries connecting all three of their lives." Other than a thematic similarity, it's difficult to see from that description how exactly the series relates to the movie, which starred Will Smith as a labor lawyer who becomes embroiled in a spy conspiracy involving the NSA, an assassination, and a reclusive surveillance expert played by Gene Hackman. Just as the fun of the Bruckheimer-produced The Rock was seeing Sean Connery unofficially reprising his James Bond role, the main attraction in Enemy of the State was seeing Hackman unofficially reprise his role from Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic The Conversation.

In addition to capitalizing on the success of Mr. Robot, shows about hacking and domestic surveillance are also obviously quite topical in the current climate. It will be interesting to see if one or both of these reboots ends up making it to series!

Tradecraft: NBCUniversal Developing NSA/U.S. Cyber Command TV Series

Deadline reports that NBCUniversal International Studios, Participant Media, and the production company behind Downton Abbey, Carnival Films, are developing a TV series based on Going Clear director Alex Gibney's incredibly compelling documentary Zero Days. The trade reports that Gibney will direct (it's unclear if they mean the whole series or just the pilot) and Stephen Schiff (The Americans) will write, and the two will produce along with Marc Shmuger. Zero Days will form the basis of the first season. The documentary tells the true story of a joint U.S.-Israeli operation to create a computer virus, known as Stuxnet, to damage Iran's nuclear program. But the virus gets out of control and, Skynet-style, takes on a life of its own. The thriller series is "tentatively titled" Stuxnet, but since that is obviously one of the worst titles ever bandied about for a television series, presumably that will change. (What's wrong with the enigmatic Zero Days?)

According to the trade, "Season 1 of Stuxnet will focus on what happens when a self-replicating computer virus developed by the West to disable and destroy nuclear facilities in the Middle East starts to spread beyond its intended targets, threatening the security of those it was intended to protect. The drama will tell a tale of hackers, spies, nuclear secrets and how one clandestine mission opens the Pandora’s box of cyberwarfare forever – a new era of global conflict without rules." Presumably, like the documentary, it will offer a glimpse inside the ultra-secretive worlds of the NSA (a more or less defensive SIGINT agency) and America's offensive cyberspook outfit, U.S. Cyber Command. Definitely fertile ground for a spy show!

Teaser for Oliver Stone's Snowden

Open Road has released the teaser for Oliver Stone's Snowden. As previously reported, this is the first of at least two projects in the works about the equally famous and infamous NSA whistleblower or traitor (depending on your point of view) Edward Snowden. The second one, somewhat surprisingly, hails from the James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. Snowden's all-star cast includes Shailene Woodley (White Bird in a Blizzard), Timothy Olyphant (Hitman), Scott Eastwood (Fury), Nicholas Cage (The Rock), Zachary Quinto (Hitman: Agent 47), Melissa Leo (The Equalizer), Tom Wilkinson (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol), Joely Richardson (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Rhys Ifans (Elementary), and, in the title role, Joseph Gordon Levitt. Snowden opens this Christmas.

Bond Producers, Oliver Stone Behind Rival Edward Snowden Movies

Last year's powerful, Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour chronicled the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ramifications of his revelations about domestic spying in the United States. It's a fascinating film, and together with the Frontline report "United States of Secrets" actually managed to change my opinion of Snowden. But audiences don't turn out in droves for documentaries, so most moviegoers will have to wait for the feature version to form an opinion. Make that feature versions. There are two rival Snowden movies in various states of production/development, and one of them comes from the most famous producing team in all of spydom.

It's extremely rare that James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson tackle anything other than 007. (Broccoli produced the HBO movie Crime of the Century back in 1996, and the pair were attached to produce the spy movie Remote Control back in 2009, but that project never materialized.) But last year Deadline reported that they're doing just that, and in stark contrast with the fantasy spy world of James Bond, they're planning to tell one of the most famous real-life espionage stories of our age. According to the trade, Sony acquired Glenn Greenwald‘s book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State for Broccoli and Wilson to produce. The book narrates Greenwald's work with Snowden to expose the NSA's domestic spying operations in The Guardian. "No Place To Hide is a terrifying personal account of one of the most relevant political events of our time," Wilson and Broccoli said in a statement. "We are thrilled to be working with Glenn to bring this important story to the screen." But they won't be the first people to deliver a movie about these events.

Broccoli and Wilson are not alone in their passion for the Snowden story. Oliver Stone has them beaten to the punch with a Snowden project of his own for Open Road Films and Endgame Entertainment, which is already filming in Munich and on schedule to be released this year. Stone's Snowden stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the controversial whistleblower. Stone's movie is based on another Guardian journalist's book, The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding, and a novel by Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, called Time of the Octopus. (That should be the title of the movie!) Harding and other Guardian journalists and staffers will serve as consultants. "This is one of the greatest stories of our time," Stone said in a statement published on Deadline last year. "A real challenge. I’m glad to have The Guardian working with us."

Shailene Woodley (White Bird in a Blizzard) stars opposite Gordon-Levitt as Snowden's girlfriend, Lindsay Mills. Timothy Olyphant (Hitman) plays a CIA agent; Clint's son Scott Eastwood (Fury) plays an NSA agent, and Nicholas Cage plays a what Deadline describes as "a former U.S. Intelligence official." Anyone who's seen Citizenfour or "United States of Secrets" can probably guess that this character is likely based on NSA whistleblower William Binney, who plays a crucial role in the story. Zachary Quinto (Hitman: Agent 47) plays Glenn Greenwald (good casting!), Melissa Leo (The Equalizer) plays Citizenfour filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Tom Wilkinson (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) plays Guardian defense and intelligence correspondent Ewen MacAskill. Joely Richardson (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and Rhys Ifans (Elementary) round out the impressive cast. A few weeks ago, Deadline revealed the first photos of Gordon-Levitt as Snowden (above).

Snowden is currently slated to open Christmas Day. It will be interesting to see if Stone's film clicks with audiences like All the President's Men or flounders in its proximity to the events it's portraying like Bill Condon's 2013 Julian Assange movie The Fifth Estate and fails to find viewers. If it's a hit, will Broccoli and Wilson still proceed with their Snowden movie? Presumably they won't be turning their full attention to it until after SPECTRE comes out, and it's possible that more time passing from Snowden's exposure of classified material and subsequent flight to Russia will give them the perspective necessary to make a better film. It's a complex news story, and there is certainly room for multiple films with multiple perspectives on the issues and events surrounding the divisive Snowden. Personally, I hope both movies become a reality. I'd really like to see Broccoli and Wilson's take on real world espionage.

Tradecraft: NBC Developing Drama About NSA Hitman in a Coma... Or Something

Um... I don't understand this well enough to paraphrase, so I'm just going to reprint verbatim what Deadline reports about a new drama series in development at NBC: "Ricochet is a high-concept serialized action/thriller about a professional hitman who is trapped in a coma and forced to serve as a guinea pig for a secret NSA espionage program; a project that uses technology discovered while researching near-death-experiences to send operatives into other people’s bodies." Got it? Wait, what would the NSA want with a hitman? Oh, because he's in a coma! I see; that makes sense now. But...  Hey, wait. Well, Tripp Vinson, one of the producers on CBS's Josh Holloway spy series Intelligence, executive produces, so presumably he knows what all that means.