Damon signs on for Iraq drama

Matt Damon is headed to Iraq’s Green Zone after cashing in his chips on “Ocean’s 13,” which opens Friday (June 8).

The actor has signed up for writer-director Paul Greengrass’s take on Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s novel “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.”

Chandrasekaran’s 2006 book centers on the overwhelmed provisional American government set up in central Baghdad near former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s palace.

According to the journalist’s account, many of the American coalition staffers housed in the so-called Green Zone were President George Bush loyalists who had never previously been out of the United States, and as a result a circuslike atmosphere ensued.

The film is being produced by Working Title Films for Universal Pictures. The live action pact marks the fourth film Damon, Greengrass and Universal have teamed on following the popular Jason Bourne trilogy. “The Bourne Ultimatum,” the third film in the amnesiac-spy series, opens August 3. Greengrass was Oscar-nominated last year for his unflinching look at the events that took place on flight United 93 on September 11th, 2001.