It's really a shame that the world seems to have forgotten about Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who was either the scourge of the world or its savior, depending on your perspective. A number of a studios have been trying to put together a film based on Assange's info-dumping career, and now one looks to have taken a dramatic step forward ahead of all the others.
Dreamworks is apparently looking at Jeremy Renner to play Assange, and Bill Condon to take over as director. The film is based on two books, David Leigh and Luke Harding’s Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy and Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website. Leigh was a personal friend of Assange's who once harbored him while trying to duck the CIA. HBO is currently developing their own Wikileaks film, while Mark Boal(The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) is prepping one as well based on a recent New York Times article. And that doesn't even count the various documentaries. We're in for Wikileaks overload, folks.
That said, it'd be hard to tell that story since so much about Assange and Wikileaks' future is uncertain. The group has been in a bit of a lull while Ecuador considers his request for political asylum. If that works out, we may be seeing the group come back in a big way. I certainly hope so. As for Renner and Condon, I think both could use a film like this. We don't get to see Renner's dramatic side nearly enough, and this would be quite the high profile role for him to do it. Condon probably needs to cleanse his palate after helming the last two Twilight flicks. Nothing is set in stone quite yet, but let's hope all the pieces fall into the right place.
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