Tradecraft: Stone's Snowden Seeks Refuge in 2016

Spy-jammed 2015 has lost one more defector to 2016. Following in the footsteps of Grimsby and London Has Fallen, Oliver Stone's Edward Snowden movie Snowden has been pushed back to next year. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film won't be ready in time for its previously announced Christmas release date. The move, of course, puts the fact-based drama out of awards contention for this year. And if 007 producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are still intent on producing their own Snowden movie after they finish up with SPECTRE, Stone's move to an unspecified date next year will narrow the gap between the competing pictures. Stone's Snowden stars Joseph Gordon Levitt (Looper), Shailene Woodley (White Bird in a Blizzard), Timothy Olyphant (Hitman), Zachary Quinto (Hitman: Agent 47), Melissa Leo (The Equalizer), Tom Wilkinson (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and Nicholas Cage (The Rock).

Tradecraft: ABC Buys Whistleblower Thriller Canary

I'm not entirely sure from the scant description that Canary is a spy show, but I'm making an educated guess that it is. Deadline reports that ABC has bought Prison Break co-E.P. Zack Estrin's pilot Canary. According to the trade, "Described as 'Homeland meets Erin Brockovich,' Canary follows a woman who risks everything to help a whistleblower come forward with secret information that will impact the lives of millions." What makes me think it will be a spy show? Well, the Homeland name-check, for one, plus the story similarities to Citizenfour director Laura Poitras' relationship with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, plus the general Snowdenmania of our time. (In addition to the Oliver Stone movie Snowden due out at Christmas with Joseph Gordon Levitt in the title role, James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are developing their own Snowden movie, and Matt Damon cites the whistleblower as his and Paul Greengrass's chief inspiration to revisit Jason Bourne.) Of course, for all we know Estrin's character could be blowing the whistle on Big Pharm or tobacco or the telecomm industry. We'll probably have to wait and see if ABC ends up shooting the pilot, which Estrin will write, before we learn more.

Tradecraft: Vincent Cassel to Menace Jason Bourne, Plus Details on the Sequel's Story

Variety reports that French star Vincent Cassel (Agents Secrets, Ocean's 12) has signed on to play an assassin on the trail of Matt Damon's Jason Bourne in Paul Greengrass's new, still untitled Bourne sequel. Presumably, this is the same role that Viggo Mortensen was previously rumored for. It sure would be great if he turned out to be a version of the primary antagonist from Robert Ludlum's books, Carlos, but that seems unlikely. The casting (so far uniformly excellent) certainly seems to indicate that everything is falling into the usual, formulaic places for the film series. Cassel will be the latest in a line of tough assassins to go after Bourne, following in the footsteps of Clive Owen, Karl Urban and Edgar Ramirez. The previously announced Tommy Lee Jones, similarly, fits right in with the numerous tough guys emeritus to play bureaucrats from the CIA who have chased Bourne before (including Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, David Straithairn and Joan Allen).

However, Damon recently indicated to Buzzfeed (via Dark Horizons) that it's not just business as usual. His Bourne hasn't been seen since 2007 (Jeremy Renner played a different graduate of the same elite government assassin program in 2012's The Bourne Legacy), and it turns out there's a reason for that, in the actor's mind. "We always looked at those movies as really about the Bush presidency," he said, "and so we kind of had to wait for the world to change. What does the character have to say?" It was Edward Snowden's whistleblowing and the renewed debate about security versus privacy that gave Damon and director Greengrass (no stranger to whistleblowers, having coauthored the notorious MI5 tell-all Spy Catcher with Peter Wright in the Eighties) the answer they were looking for. Buzzfeed points out that it may have actually been Senator John McCain who gave them the notion, when he said in 2013 that Snowden was seen by young Americans as "some sort of Jason Bourne." So... not going back to the books, then?

Damon said, "Without giving too much of it away, it’s Bourne through an austerity-riddled Europe and in a post-Snowden world. It seems like enough has changed, you know? There are all these kinds of arguments about spying and civil liberties and the nature of democracy." The locations also reflect very contemporary issues. The new movie starts off in Greece in the midst of its economic turmoils, and ends in Las Vegas. And, if previous reports are true, along the way Jason Bourne will be visiting the Canary Islands, with five weeks of production scheduled in Tenerife, the largest island. The film commences shooting this month.

Alicia Vikander (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and Julia Stiles (reprising her role from previous Bourne movies) also star. Greengrass, who helmed The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum as well as the underrated Green Zone with Damon, will direct from a script he wrote with Christopher Rouse (who edited Greengrass's two previous Bourne movies) after concocting the story with Damon. Damon and Greengrass are also producing, alongside franchise newcomer Gregory Goodman (X-Men: First Class) and Bourne veterans Frank Marshall and Jeffrey Weiner, of Captivate Entertainment, rights-holders of the Robert Ludlum library. The film is slated to open on July 29, 2016.

Read my review of Paul Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum here.

Read my review of Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy here.

Read my review of the 1988 miniseries of The Bourne Identity here.

Read my review of Robert Ludlum's novel The Bourne Identity here.

Read my review of Robert Ludlum's novel The Bourne Supremacy here.

Read my review of Robert Ludlum's novel The Bourne Ultimatum here. 

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: Fox Films Littell's Defection

Deadline reports that screenwriter Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) has sold a spec script called Defection, based on a Robert Littell spy novel, to Fox. The trade doesn't happen to mention which Littell novel in their story, but Coming Soon has reached the very reasonable conclusion that it's the author's first spy novel, The Defection of A. J. Lewinter. But that Cold War tale has been updated for our times. The script made the prestigious Black List, which offers a plot summary: "After the Edward Snowden affair, an intelligence contractor defects to North Korea, taking a mysterious bag with him, and the CIA hires an expert trained during the Cold War to help with the case." (Let's see if it's still North Korea by the time the film gets made since studios seem to be scared of them right now.) Last month, The Tracking Board reported that Brad Pitt was attached to star in and produce Defection. I'm not sure if he's still in the picture, or if that deal fell through and the Fox one supersedes Pitt's involvement.

The Condor Flies Again

Thirty-seven years after he last wrote about the character, James Grady is revisiting his most famous creation. Ronald Malcolm, hero of the classic 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor and its 1978 sequel, Shadow of the Condor, will return next year in the provocatively titled Last Days of the Condor. According to the publisher's copy, "Last Days of the Condor is the bullet-paced, ticking clock saga of America on the edge of our most startling spy world revolution since 9/11. Set in the savage streets and Kafkaesque corridors of Washington, DC, shot through with sex and suspense, with secret agent tradecraft and full-speed action, with hunters and the hunted, Last Days of the Condor is a breakneck saga of America’s secrets." Grady previously explored the post-9/11 intelligence world with the Condor concept in an odd "reimagining" of his classic novel, a short story entitled "Condor.net." That tale was about a new, young Condor; this one is about the original Condor in his old age. The Kirkus Review provides a few more details about the plot of the new novel:

All these years after achieving notoriety as a CIA whistle-blower, the silver-haired Condor lives on the edge of reality. Put on meds for every conceivable kind of post-traumatic disorder following a heart attack, he's visited by ghosts and gets "lost in time." When a distrusting federal agent assigned to monitor his recovery is found brutally murdered in Condor's apartment, [Condor] is the prime suspect.

That kind of makes it sound like more of a sequel to the movie version, 3 Days of the Condor, than the book. In the movie, the hero (rechristened Joe Turner and played by Robert Redford) ultimately blows the whistle on the CIA, an iconic finale both in keeping with its own post-Watergate, post-Pentagon Papers, post-Church Committee times (in which the country was deeply distrustful of the government and its intelligence agencies) and uncommonly prescient regarding our own (countless contemporary spy movies including Green Zone and Safe House have copied that ending, and supporters of Edward Snowden constantly compare him to Condor). In the book, there is no whistle blowing. Perhaps Kirkus Review is referring to something that happens in Shadow of the Condor, I suppose; I haven't read that one. But one could hardly blame Grady for incorporating the mythology of the film into his literary Condor world. While the book is inarguably one of the cornerstones of the modern espionage genre, there is little doubt that today more people are familiar with the story through the Sydney Pollack-directed movie. As a fan of both versions, I just hope he goes to the trouble of reconciling the two. According to Grady's publicists, the forthcoming sequel has already been optioned for a film itself, by MGM. (It would be quite cool if Redford could be lured into reprising his famous role.)

Last Days of the Condor hits shelves on February 17, 2015, published by Forge, and is available for pre-order on Amazon now.