The Osama movie

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad couldn’t bear the idea of India being shown as Pakistan in the movie, and its protestors gheraoed the set till the trial shoot was called off.

The movie on the US operation to capture Osama bin Laden has gotten off to a dream start by not getting off to a dream start. Thanks to various controversies that have dogged it from the beginning—including last week’s events in Chandigarh—the movie has already got plenty of attention.

The movie is called Zero Dark Thirty (ZD30), and is being directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose The Hurt Locker won six Oscars, with her becoming the first woman ever to win the Academy’s best director prize.

ZD30 first flew into rough weather when Republican Congressman Peter King said the Obama Administration was providing Bigelow classified information so that the film would boost Obama’s image for his re-election.  Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have denied the allegations. “Our upcoming film project about the decade-long pursuit of bin Laden… integrates the collective efforts of three administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, as well as the cooperative strategies and implementation by the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency,” they said. But the Republican party succeeded in pushing the film release from October to December 2012, after the White House election in November.

The film’s crew was in Chandigarh to see if the city could be used as a stand-in for Abbottabad, the Pakistani town where Osama was killed. But the Vishwa Hindu Parishad couldn’t bear the idea of India being shown as Pakistan, and its protestors gheraoed the set till the trial shoot was called off. The Abbottabad home in which Osama was killed might now be recreated in Jordan instead.

Shabana Azmi may star in the film. The cast includes Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Edgar Ramirez and, presumably, a few choppers.

Kathryn BigelowOsama bin LadenZero Dark Thirty (ZD30)