George Clooney’s going political again.
The multi-hyphenate (actor, writer, director) has picked up the rights to Jonathan Mahler’s legal thriller, The Challenge, with a possible view to multi-hyphenating the book on its passage to the big screen.
No decision has yet been taken on Clooney’s exact involvement with the movie, which is being developed through his and Grant Heslov’s Smoke House production company, but if and when it does get made, it’s sure to ruffle a few feathers.
That’s because the book focuses on the true-life campaign by U.S. Navy lawyer Charles Swift and Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal to ensure a fair trial for Salim Hamdan, who was the bodyguard and limo driver of some guy called Osama bin Laden.
Hamdan was sentenced just last week by a panel of Guantanamo Bay-based military officers to 66 months in prison, after being found guilty of material support to terrorism, but he was cleared of conspiracy to commit murder – which many see as a victory for Swift (who some are predicting might be a good fit for Clooney, who showed with Michael Clayton that idealistic lawyers suit him) and Katyal.
You sense that making this movie – which will be spun by the right-wing media into a pro-bin Laden movie, no matter what the truth – could prove perilous for the famously liberal Clooney, but he’s shown in the past that he’s prepared to stick to his political guns in movie-making, and this should be no different.
The Challenge joins a roster of politically charged projects on Smoke House’s roster, including Men Who Stare At Goats, based on Jon Ronson’s book, and Escape From Tehran, about the CIA’s attempt to smuggle Americans out of Iran in 1979 under the cover of a fake movie. For more on that, read the novel. If you don’t have the time, read Ian Nathan’s recent Big Story At The Back.