Director Oliver Stone now has the rights to the source material he plans to base his Edward Snowden movie on. Just a week after confirming plans to make his own movie about the NSA whistleblower, the Savages director has optioned an upcoming novel by Snowden’s Russian lawyer.
Stone and his producing partner Moritz Borman came to terms with lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who wrote Time of the Octopus, which will be one of the sources for the film’s screenplay. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stone will use Kucherena’s experiences with Snowden, plus The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding to write the script. He hopes to get production off the ground later this year.
Kucherena’s novel is actually a fictional story about American Joshua Cold, who is trying to get asylum in Russia and spends three weeks in limbo in the airport. (That sounds familiar.) While at the airport, he chats with his lawyer about how he exposed a government surveillance program. The book has not been published yet.
Stone told the Guardian last week that he is planning on making a film about Snowden. Stone implied that the newspaper was actually going to assist his project.
If Stone gets to start filming before the end of the year, he could get a leg up on Sony’s project, which will be based on Glenn Greenwald’s No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State. That project is being produced by James Bond team Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. There is no talent attached to it yet, though.
Stone recently directed Savages. He has Best Director Oscars for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.
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