Book already written on Osama Bin Laden's Death and Potential Film Projects
As you know last night it was reported that America kicked some major ass and took out Osama Bin Laden! He had it coming, we knew it would eventually happen, and after ten years of hunting him down we finally got him, which is some pretty damn cool news. News that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson apparently knew before everyone else. Before the news broke Johnson tweeted the following message, "Just got word that will shock the world." That could mean one of two things, he knew about Osoma Bin Laden's death before everyone else, or he knew we would all be shocked by the fact that Fast Five made $83.6 million this weekend.
Of course the moment Bin Laden's death was confirmed we all knew that Hollywood was going to get a movie into production telling the story. A book has already been written about the momentous event called Seal Team Six. The book was written by Howard Wasdin, and was told by the Navy Seals team that killed Osama Bin Laden in a mansion near Islamabad. It's due to hit stores on May 24th.
According to THR, "It will chronicle the specialized military group, called Naval Special Warfare Development Group or DevGru for short. It's a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command, which costs the country more than $1 billion annually to fund."
Then there are the movies that are going into development. It's being reported that Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow has already been preparing a film project based on the killing of Bin Laden, and is currently in the process of casting. She is looking at casting Joel Edgerton as the main character. The title for this film is called Kill Bin Laden, originally planned to tell a story based on an earlier unsuccessful mission to try to kill the Al Qaeda leader. There's also another film that was being set up at Paramount Pictures back in 2006 called Jawbreaker, that would tell the story of the hunt for Bin Laden. Jawbreaker is based on a book "by U.S. intelligence operative Gary Berntsen about the December 2001 American-led military mission to hunt and kill Bin Laden right during the opening stages of the 9/11-prompted invasion of Afghanistan that the author as the CIA pointman had helped coordinate with Special Operations Forces. The heavily vetted book detailed how close those forces came to finding and executing Bin Laden in the rugged mountains of Tora Bora until they were pulled back after a decision was made to let Pakistan tribal leaders lead the search -- a decision experts felt helped Bin Laden get away."
Of course now that Bin Laden has actually been killed, the studios may want to get these films into production soon, or another film version. It will be interesting to see who picks up the movie rights the the book that is being released. At this point that's the story everyone wants to hear and see. The question is will these other films still tell the stories they originally planned, or will they be updated to mirror the event that just occurred? A film telling this recent story is sure to blow up at the box-office.
No matter what happens I am looking forward to reading that book and watching the movie once it comes out. What are your thoughts on all this?