Dark Horizons report that Josh Lucas (Session 9, upcoming Poseidon) will star in the film adaptation of the events leading up to, and presumably including, journalist Daniel Pearl's murder in Pakistan. The film will be directed by Kip Williams from a script by Peter Landesman, based on the book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by French author-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.
From Wikipedia:
"On January 23, 2002, on his way to an interview with a supposed terrorist leader, Pearl was kidnapped by a militant group calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. This group claimed Pearl was a spy, and — using the e-mail address kidnapperguy@hotmail.com — sent the United States a range of demands, including the freeing of all Pakistani terror detainees, and the release of a halted U.S. shipment of F-16 fighter jets to the Pakistani government.
The message read:
We give u one more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.
Photos of Pearl handcuffed with a gun at his head and holding up a newspaper were attached. There was no response to pleas from Pearl's editor, and from his wife Marianne who was pregnant with their first child.
Six days later, Pearl was murdered by having his throat slit."
Daniel Pearl's death was an extremely powerful tragedy for all journalists, as it put into question their roles in reporting the news, and how safe they could feel as "on the spot" historians (of course, several journalists were killed in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by an American tank, and an actual explanation of this event is still a controversial matter).
Daniel Pearl is one of the most recent cases of a journalist dying during duty, as he was trying to expose connections with terrorist organizations. A similar story, that of Veronica Guerin has already been made into a film starring Cate Blanchett, as she played the journalist who was murdered while investigating drug trafficking in Ireland.
Robert Fisk had written an interesting article after Daniel Pearl's murder for the London Independent, and it can be read at ZMag for those who are interested.
I'm curious to see if this film will simply take a conventional approach to a tragic story, or if it will enter more interesting and challenging areas.
To begin with, changes have already been made for the film adaptation, such as "fictionalizing" Daniel Pearl, as well changing French author Levy (the man who wrote the book on which the film is based) to an American television newsman. It seems the changes have been made because the studio "wanted to avoid infringing on another upcoming film based on a book by Pearl's widow," says Hollywood Reporter.
Production is expected to begin this autumn.
