Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in film

Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in a movie directed by Oliver Stone. The 33-year-old actor most recently directed and starred in Don Jon and has acted in high-profile films Lincoln, The Dark Knight Rises and Inception. Stone has written the screenplay based on two books - The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World’s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding and Time Of The Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena.

This film needs an independent in the true sense, where political pressures will not come into play.

Movie producer Moritz Borman

The still untitled film goes into production in Munich in January, said independent studio Open Road Films and production and financing company Endgame Entertainment. Stone has won best-director Oscars for Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July. Snowden, who was granted asylum by Russia, is wanted in the US after he leaked tens of thousands of classified intelligence documents to the media in 2013. The recently released documentary Citizenfour by Laura Poitras chronicles how the former NSA contractor decided to leak the documents and the global repercussions of that act.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Entertainment