"The Bourne Legacy" Australian PremiereKill The Messenger has been rumbling away as a project for some time. It is based on the true story of a journalist who broke a story of the CIA arming Contra rebels in Nicaragua and aiding the importing of cocaine into California. As the film’s title suggests, the reporter in question (Gary Webb at the San Jose Mercury News) was subsequently smeared by the CIA, tragically to the point of him taking his own life.

In the mid-1990’s, Webb published a series of articles which history would tell us was pretty much spot on and although the CIA would try to spin their actions as the lesser of two evils, what should have been a career-defining (in a positive way) expose by Webb led to a smear campaign that cost him his job and segued into a spiral of depression and eventual suicide.

The screenplay is by Peter Landesman (Trade and the currently filming JFK-themed Parkland) and Michael Cuesta is on board to direct. Cuesta has done solid TV work, including Homeland, Six Feet Under and Dexter and so seems like a safe enough pair of hands for this. Jeremy Renner has signed on to star in what looks like a film sharing more than a passing similarity with The Insider or All The President’s Men. Whether its quality will measure up to those illustrious forebears remains to be seen. Focus Features will distribute the film worldwide.

Source: Deadline.

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Dave has been writing for HeyUGuys since mid-2010 and has found them to be the most intelligent, friendly, erudite and insightful bunch of film fans you could hope to work with. He's gone from ham-fisted attempts at writing the news to interviewing Lawrence Bender, Renny Harlin and Julian Glover, to writing articles about things he loves that people have actually read. He has fairly broad tastes as far as films are concerned, though given the choice he's likely to go for Con Air over Battleship Potemkin most days. He's pretty sure that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most overrated mess in cinematic history.