While he successfully launched a directing career with Brighton Rock last year, Rowan Joffe is still picking up writer-for-hire assignments. And it would seem his speciality right now is controversial real people, since he’s not only been working on** Agent Zigzag**, about a double agent during World War Two, but he’s now accepted the task of writing a script about the WikiLeaks affair for HBO and the BBC.
Deadline reports that regular Steven Spielberg collaborators Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall have come aboard to produce the eventual film, which will be based on Raffi Khatchadourian’s feature about the man, No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency, which was published in the New Yorker last year.
As you might expect, it’ll chronicle the story of pale info-spreader Assange, who leaked many embarrassing, seemingly secret government/military documents to the media. And he’s still at it today, though given that he’s currently on bail awaiting a High Court hearing on whether he should be extradited to Sweden to face trial for alleged sex crimes.
Given that he’s been such a lightning rod for controversy, it should come as no shock that there are several films about the man bubbling away, including one at DreamWorks and another by producers Barry Josephson and Michelle Krumm, who bought the rights to Andrew Fowler’s biography of Assange.
HBO and the Beeb look to have a head start on the competition right now – Joffe’s writing the script and Inside Job director Charles Ferguson attached to wield the megaphone.