Timothy Olyphant joins Oliver Stone’s Edward Snowden movie

PanARMENIAN.Net - “Justified” star Timothy Olyphant has joined Oliver Stone’s untitled movie about whistleblower Edward Snowden, Variety reports.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley and Melissa Leo are also signed up for the project with Open Road Films and Endgame Entertainment teaming on the U.S. release.

Stone and longtime producing partner Moritz Borman acquired the rights last year to two books — “Time of the Octopus,” a novel written by Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, and Luke Harding’s “The Snowden Files, The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man” — as sources for Stone’s screenplay. Borman is producing with Eric Kopeloff.

Snowden was charged in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property and his passport was revoked a week later by the U.S. Department of State. He was granted temporary asylum by Russia last year.

Olyphant has been cast as a CIA agent who befriended Snowden after Snowden released the classified documents. Leo will portray Laura Poitras, whose Snowden documentary “Citizenfour” is the frontrunner in the category at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Olyphant starred in “This Is Where I Leave You.”

The news was first reported by Deadline.com.