Rhys Ifan and Joely Richardson have joined a cast that includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson and Timothy Olyphant in Oliver Stone’s Snowden, which has been slated for release on Christmas Day by Open Road Films. It is undecided whether it will bow in limited release or it will go wide on the holiday.
Other pics going wide include Monster Trucks, Point Break, and Concussion and, of course, the latest Star Wars will be only a week in the marketplace by Christmas. Open Road acquired the property last year, Deadline reported exclusively.
The picture centers on Edward Snowden, the young American who fled to Russia seeking asylum after making public classified NSA documents. He is viewed as both a traitor and a hero. With screenplay from Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald (The Homesman), the film is based on two books — The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man and Time of the Octopus penned by Snowden’s Russian Lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena. CitizenFour, a documentary about Snowden, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.
Internationally, Pathe will open the picture in France on December 30th and it will roll out via Universum in Germany on January 8. Other distributors include Gaga for Japan.
The project was developed with Pathe Films with Stone’s producing partner Moritz Borman. The film is being produced by Borman, Eric Kopeloff and Philip Schulz-Deyle. Wild Bunch is handling international sales in all other territories, with Open Road and Endgame Entertainment partnering for the U.S. release.
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