For her follow-up to 2009's Oscar-winning Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow has moved her sights to Afghanistan for her take on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty – and the first teaser trailer has just arrived.
Concentrating on interrogation, redaction and a lot of map work, the teaser doesn't show all that much – even hiding its impressive cast, with Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Ehles the only identifiable faces – so moviegoers will have to wait for a full trailer to see the likes of Mark Strong and brothers-in-arms Nash and Joel Edgerton do their thing.
As for the title, Bigelow has explained to EW that “it’s a military term for 30 minutes after midnight, and it refers also to the darkness and secrecy that cloaked the entire decade long mission.”
Bigelow's project has been a long time coming, with the Point Break director working on a movie about the hunt for Bin Laden even as the news emerged that he'd been captured and killed in May 2011. After that, writer/producer Mark Boal started again from scratch and created what's now called Zero Dark Thirty after toying with other names like Hunt and Kill Bin Laden.
Telling the as-yet unknown story of how the mission was executed, the film has been dogged by controversy since its inception, with its release date even being moved from September to December after there were claims that it might serve as part of Obama's reelection campaign.
Details on whether the very top of the US Government's involvement with the raid will be shown remains to be seen, with Boal and Bigelow remaining tight-lipped, maintaining that this is neither propaganda or just a piece of entertainment – it's an "amazing story about the triumph of will, dedication, and duty."
UPDATE: Here's a [REDACTED] poster for you too. It's definitely rather [REDACTED], not to mention [REDACTED].
Zero Dark Thirty is set for a December 19 release in the US.