Considering that Bowe Bergdahl’s release has been more controversial than the Obama Administration could have predicted, it should be no surprise that Kathryn Bigelow is interested in bringing his story to the screen. Bigelow has tackled controversial topics in her last two acclaimed films and has another on the docket that could be just as controversial.
Back on Monday, Deadline first reported that Bigelow and her now-regular collaborator Mark Boal starting the development process on a Bergdahl film. It is being set up at Boal’s Page One shingle, which has financial backing from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures (Zero Dark Thirty, Her, American Hustle).
A rep for Boal later confirmed that the project is in the works with CNN.
Bigelow and Boal have become the new political storytellers in Hollywood, first teaming up for the critically acclaimed The Hurt Locker. They worked together again on Zero Dark Thirty and Bigelow is reportedly signed to helm True American: Murder & Mercy in Texas with Tom Hardy starring. That could be her most controversial project to date if it happens, since the story centers on a Texas man who killed two immigrants shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
It has also been reported that a second Bergdahl film is in the works, with Todd Field (In The Bedroom) directing. That would be based on the late Michael Hastings’ Rolling Stone piece “America’s Last Prisoner of War,” an investigative story published before Bergdahl’s release last month.
Bergdahl was held by the Taliban for five years before the White House exchanged five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for him. He was the only American POW in Afghanistan.
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