Hollywood Treatment

Osama bin Laden Dead, Movie from Kathryn Bigelow of 'The Hurt Locker'

Kathryn Bigelow planned to detail unsuccessful mission.

Talk about timely. In recent weeks, The Hurt Locker’s Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow has been casting an independent film with the working title Kill bin Laden, about the hunt for the 9/11 mastermind and al Qaeda terrorist leader. For the film—centering on an earlier unsuccessful mission to kill bin Laden as he hid in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan—Bigelow is collaborating with The Hurt Locker’s journalist-cum-screenwriter Mark Boal. Deadline reports that Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle Chief Larry Ellison, is ready to fund the film, and Bigelow and Boal have approached Joel Edgerton (Animal Kingdom) to star. Meanwhile, Paramount Pictures optioned Jawbreaker back in 2006—a book by U.S. intelligence operative Gary Berntsen about the unsuccessful December 2001 U.S.-led military mission to kill bin Laden. The project had stalled, with Oliver Stone at one point interested.