The actor has just joined Oliver Stone’s upcoming Edward Snowden biopic detailing the whistleblower’s history-making information leaks. Despite his proven conspiratorial loner chops, Cage won’t be playing Snowden himself, that honor goes to Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Instead, Variety describes Cage’s role as a “former U.S. Intelligence Official.” A scandalous NSA thriller probably needs some of those. Other cast members include Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Rhys Ifans, Joely Richardson, and Timothy Olyphant.
While Oliver Stone’s political paranoia has stayed constant throughout his career, the actual quality of his films, from JFK to W., hasn’t been quite as consistent. Still, it’s hard to imagine a better pairing of filmmaker and subject. Plus, with the Snowden documentary Citizenfour now an Academy Award winner, the topic seems like a safe bet in Hollywood at the moment.
The film, expected to be called simply Snowden, takes inspiration from the books The Snowden Files, The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding, and Time of the Octopus by Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena. Snowden is currently shooting in Munich before moving to other parts of the world by May.
