Actress Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, The Fault in Our Stars, The Divergent Series) is currently filming Oliver Stone’s next big (untitled) project about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Third Rock From the Sun, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For). Woodley will play Lindsay Mills, the self-proclaimed “pole-dancing super hero” who has been dating Snowden since 2009. She visits him often in Russia. Their relationship was included in the other documentary about Snowden, CITIZENFOUR, which casts a soft light on Snowden. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, who’s co-founder Laura Poitras directed CITIZENFOUR, writes: “But the fact that he [Snowden] is now living in domestic bliss as well, with his long-term girlfriend whom he loves, should forever put to rest the absurd campaign to depict his life as grim and dank.” It may be hard for the conspiracy-loving Stone to out cuddle Poitras when it comes to Snowden. We’ll see.
Based on the book The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding, the screenplay will be written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald who wrote Tommy Lee Jones’ TV project, Homesman, and the P.O.V. documentary, The Ballad of Esequiel Cascade Hernandez. (Tommy Lee Jones narrates the story of Hernandez, a young American man who was murdered by U.S. Marines on the border between Texas and Mexico.) Stone loves political turmoil, but he’s a visual artist first: you can bet you’re going to see Shailene Woodley dancing on the pole.
