Kathryn Bigelow Intended for 'Zero Dark Thirty' To Be a Much Different Film
September 11, 2001 was one of the darkest days in American history, as nearly 3,000 people died due to a terrorist attack led by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. America, understandably, wanted revenge, and while we went to war inside Afghanistan, bin Laden was nowhere to be found, as the leader went underground. Nearly a decade later, with bin Laden still not found, Kathryn Bigelow started to write the screenplay for her next film with Mark Boal, who had won an Oscar for both writing and producing The Hurt Locker.
What would become Zero Dark Thirty was the ideal followup to The Hurt Locker, the war film starring Jeremy Renner about an explosive disposal team during the Iraq War. While that film took place largely on the battlefield, Zero Dark Thirty would mainly go behind the scenes to explore how America had failed to capture the most wanted man in the world. Then everything changed.
Osama bin Laden Was Killed During the Writing of 'Zero Dark Thirty'
On May 1, 2011 came the shocking announcement from President Obama that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed by a group of Navy SEALs. The reason why it took so long to find bin Laden was because he wasn't in Afghanistan but had been hiding out in Pakistan. In a 2012 interview with Nightline, Bigelow said that she and Boal were actually in his office working when the news came out about bin Laden's death. Bigelow said, "We both realized simultaneously that we had to pivot."
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That's when Boal sprung into action. He had a history of being an investigative journalist, including being embedded with troops during the Iraq War, which led to him writing an article for Playboy about a bomb disposal expert. This became the basis for The Hurt Locker. Boal told Nightline, "I picked up the phone and started calling sources and asking them what they knew and taking referrals and knocking on doors and really approached it as comprehensively as I could." However, that determination would end up leading to controversy for both him and Bigelow.
Kathryn Bigelow Received a Lot of Criticism Over How She Got Her Information
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
In December 2012, just weeks before Zero Dark Thirty would be released in theaters, Republican congressman Peter King called for an investigation into a report that said the classified name of a Special Operations Command office which helped plan the raid had been leaked. King said, “This reported referral by the DoD Inspector General is an indication that our security and theirs was, indeed, placed at risk by people who wanted to help Hollywood make a movie.” Knowing that Zero Dark Thirty could be seen by some as a political film that was pro-Obama during the height of the 2012 Presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the release date had already been pushed back to after the election. Now they had to deal with a congressman asking for them to be investigated. On top of that, there was also controversy that Zero Dark Thirty glorified torture. Senators Diane Feinstein and John McCain even wrote a letter to Sony Pictures, calling the film "grossly inaccurate and misleading" because it suggested that Osama bin Laden's location was found through America's use of torture.
Mark Boal responded to the claims of him getting classified information by telling Nightline, "I certainly did a lot of homework, but I never asked for classified material. To my knowledge, I never received any." As for the letter from the Senators about Zero Dark Thirty's torture scenes, he told The Hollywood Reporter, "Do I think that Feinstein used the movie as a publicity tool to get a conversation going about her report? I believe it."
A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.
Image via Sony Pictures
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
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