Joseph Gordon-Levitt in currently in talks to play NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone’s upcoming biopic. The Snowden Files is an adaptation of Anatoly Kucherena’s Time of the Octopus. The writer is actually Snowden’s lawyer, and as Variety explains, the book is “considered the closest thing to a documented account of the events since Snowden first released the documents.”
In case you haven’t been reading the news lately, Snowden is a former U.S. intelligence analyst who released classified documents that revealed details of several covert global-surveillance programs. He is currently living in an undisclosed location in Russia and is seeking asylum for the long-term. If JGL takes the gig, production will start on The Snowden Files at the end of the year or early 2015. The actor just finished work on Robert Zemeckis' The Walk, in which he stars as tightrope artist Philippe Petit (aka that crazy guy who walked between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in the 1970s).
JGL is proving to be one of Hollywood’s great chameleons, so we have no doubt he’ll nail the Snowden role. Here's an up-close and personal interview with Snowden if you want to envision it for yourself.
