Joseph Gordon-Levitt is on a biopic kick. With Robert Zemeckis' 'The Walk,' a dramatization of French tightrope walker Philippe Petit's stroll across the Twin Towers, in the can, the actor is eying up a hot-button true story that will inevitably thrust him into future awards talk.
Deadline reports that Gordon-Levitt is currently circling Oliver Stone's untitled Edward Snowden drama, announced by the 'JFK' director this past June. Prepping for a December shoot in Munich, Germany, Stone's film will tell Snowden's whistleblower saga by culling material from two books: “Time Of The Octopus,” by Anatoly Kucherena, and “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World”s Most Wanted Man,” by Guardian journalist Luke Harding. The screen story will evidently follow the the C.I.A. document leaker as he awaits Russian asylum amidst a media frenzy.
Snowden's unprecedented exposure of the NSA's homeland snooping tactics in June 2013 provoked Hollywood to act quickly. Stone isn't the only Snowden film in town; In May, Sony Pictures acquired the upcoming “No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State” by Pulitzer-winning journalist and Edward Snowden-confidant Glenn Greenwald. “Skyfall” producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli are currently developing the project.
Stone's film will likely beat them to the punch, but Gordon-Levitt's involvement isn't concrete. Gordon-Levitt is currently shooting “Xmas” with Seth Rogen and, as Deadline notes, the actor has yet to sign on the dotted line for the Snowden picture. Like “The Walk,” which follows in the big footsteps of James Marsh's 2008 documentary film “Man on Wire,” Stone biopic will arrive on the heels of Laura Poitras”s potentially definitive “CITIZENFOUR,” premiering at the 2014 New York Film Festival.
Is Gordon-Levitt the right guy to bring Snowden to life on the screen? Despite a growing fanbase, the actor has not seen much love awards-wise, only earning Golden Globe nominations for “(500) Days of Sumer” and “50/50.” A high-profile role like Snowdown could leak the news to voters that Gordon-Levitt is the real deal.