Columbia Pictures has snapped up U.S. distribution rights to Kathryn Bigelow's film account of the black ops mission to capture and kill Osama bin Laden, the studio announced on Tuesday.
Mark Boal, a war journalist who wrote Bigelow's Best Picture-winning "The Hurt Locker," will write the script.
"With the death of Osama bin Laden, this film could not be more relevant. Kathryn and Mark have an outstanding perspective on the team that was hunting the most wanted man in the world," Sony Pictures Co-Chair Amy Pascal said in a statement.
It's not just ripped from the headlines. Bigelow and Boal have been developing the project since 2008, but they plan to incorporate the terrorist leader's recent killing into their film.
As Bigelow demonstrated in the memorably tense "Hurt Locker," she has no trouble turning complex global-politics into crack entertainment, so the bin Laden hunt seems like a natural fit.
Still the Oscar-winner may have competition. As TheWrap previously reported there are several bin Laden pictures in the works, including films that reportedly involve such top shelf talents as Oliver Stone and George Clooney.
Moving forward on bin Laden does mean that Bigelow and Boal are presumably pushing back production on "Triple Frontier," their planned look at a crime-plagued South American border zone.
Boal and Bigelow will produce the bin Laden project, along with Annapurna Picture’s Megan Ellison, and executive producer, Greg Shapiro, with production slated to commence in the late summer of 2011. The film will be released in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2012.
