“Hurt Locker” team readying “Kill Bin Laden"
Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, Oscar-winners for their Iraq War movie “Hurt Locker,” were following the Navy Seals team that hunted down Al Qaeda’s leader
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal -- the duo who brought gut-churning verisimilitude to the screen with 2010's best picture Academy Award winner, the Iraq War bomb squad drama The Hurt Locker -- have been planning a feature about the Navy Seals commandos that stormed Osama bin Laden's compound on Sunday night. Variety reported on Monday that the project -- which another trade, the Hollywood Reporter, says has been tentatively titled Kill Bin Laden -- will now most likely be fast-tracked to capitalize on, well, the successful outcome of the mission.
Boal, a journalist who embedded with troops in Iraq, has close contacts with the Seals, and has been tracking the black ops team for months. More than 75 of the elite band of U.S. fighters were involved in the helicopter drop-down in Pakistan and the 40-minute firefight which ended, according to reports, with a bullet to the head of the Al Qaeda leader. Variety says that casting is under way for a summer shoot. Who will play "Geronimo" – the operation's code name for its prime target, bin Laden – is anybody's guess.