The Hype Train: Kathryn Bigelow's Bin Laden Movie

The creative team behind the best action film about the war on terror is making a movie about the hunt for the biggest name of all terrorism. I mean that's some wild shit when you think about it. Let me take a step back here. The creative team that I'm talking about is "The Hurt Locker," the micro budget Academy Award winning film from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Marc Boal. Think back on that movie, it just felt so real, both in the wildly tense action scenes and the more personal moments dealing with war-driven minds trying to cope with life back in the real world. Did I mention it was a massive Oscar upset and Bigelow was the first female director to win the Oscar?

Enough gushing over that film, let's talk about what's next. Tentatively titled "Kill Bin Laden," the film hits theaters December 19th 2012. Everything about this film is packed full of details that should get you hyped. The first is that Boal and Bigelow were already working on it before the terrorist leader was killed. Once the news hit in May, they scrambled and re-wrote the final third of the script to include the final raid. Prior to that event, film focused on the battle of Tora Bora, which would have been an excellent movie on it's own.

The cast that's coming together around the movie is also wicked badass. Now they haven't released what the roles are, but you gotta assume a bulk of them are going to be grizzled NAVY SEALS. According to a recent article on Deadline, the cast is set to include a whole host of people you might recognize but not know by name, and almost all of them have played highly interesting characters in previous film. Here's a quick breakdown"

• Jason Clarke - Johnny Depp's right hand man in "Public Enemies"
• Joel Edgerton - The tough yet empathetic brother in "Animal Kingdom" and the MMA brawler in "Warrior."
• Edgar Ramirez - Star of international terrorist thriller "Carlos" and Bourne nemesis in "The Bourne Ultimatum"
• Mark Strong - The villain in the first "Sherlock Holmes" and the best part of "Body of Lies"
• Chris Pratt - Andy on the TV show "Parks & Recreation," yeah not really sure what this goofball is doing here but I trust Bigelow.
• Jessica Chastain - Great actress from "Tree of Life," I mean there has to be a female role in this thing somewhere, and who better to get to play that role?

But enough about the buzz worthy actors and acclaimed directors and writers. Why is this movie really so intriguing to me? Well, for one of the biggest world events ever, there is so much actually known about what happened that night in Abbottabad. Sure we've heard news reports and read New Yorker articles about it, but we've never seen any live video of it. As we all know we never saw pictures of the body. I may be wrong for the first time in history we're going to see one of the world's most infamous men gunned down in million dollar budget detail. With the Pentagon investigating the Obama releasing sensitive information about the raid to the production, this is by all accords the most realistic movie about a military mission ever.

I've always been fascinated by the use of media and how entertainment plays into how we process reality, and to me this film is the ULTIMATE example of it. Get on the hype train.