Opinion: ‘Hurt Locker’ pair reuniting on film that may or may not ‘Kill Bin Laden’

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The team behind the Academy Award-winning 2008 drama ‘The Hurt Locker’ has been working on a new film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

‘The as-yet-untitled film will center on the Black Ops pursuit of Bin Laden, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk about the project’s status,’ the Associated Press reported Monday.

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who successfully brought the gritty Iraq war film to the screen, have been collaborating on the Bin Laden project.

The Hollywood Reporter says the pair have been meeting with actors while working on a script provisionally titled ‘Kill Bin Laden,’ with a plot centering on a failed Black Ops mission.

However, Variety is reporting that Boal’s script is about the U.S. military successfully killing the 9/11 mastermind, ‘and will definitely include the 40-minute firefight at the compound in Pakistan’ where Bin Laden was fatally shot.

‘The Hurt Locker’ won a total of six Oscars in 2008, including best picture. Bigelow won best director that year, a first for a female director.

That film got mixed reviews from the Defense Department. Although Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the film was ‘authentic’ and ‘very compelling’ and recommended it to his staff, the government pulled its production assistance at the last minute in 2007, claiming the film’s makers shot scenes that weren’t in the screenplay submitted to the Defense Department, including a sequence that the government believed portrayed troops unflatteringly.

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-- Tony Pierce
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