Bradley Manning may only have been found partially guilty yesterday, but as Variety reports, Hollywood is already looking at making a movie about the gay former soldier.
Last year Oscar-winning documaker Alex Gibney and producer Marc Shmuger, the filmmakers behind acclaimed doc, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, optioned the rights to Denver Nicks’ book Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History. Now that the verdict is in, they’re looking for a writer to turn it into a feature film.
Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of secret documents to Wikileaks, was found guilty of 20 charges, including espionage and theft, but acquitted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. He could still face a sentence of over 100 years though.
Gibney commented, “I hope that Judge Lind will be lenient in her sentence, taking into consideration Manning’s intent, his willingness to take responsibility for his actions, and the outrageously abusive treatment he has received at the hands of the Obama Administration.”
It’s been alleged that while awaiting court martial, Manning was kept completely isolated from other people and at time deprived of clothing (supposedly as he was seen as a suicide risk), although after international outrage his imprisonment conditions improved. He’s also faced accusations that his desire to reveal what he saw as crimes being perpetrated by the US was the result of gender dysphoria, based on a letter he sent to a gender counsellor where he expressed that he felt female (although no one’s done a good job of saying why one is linked to the other).
Hopefully the film will also look at the problems he faced as a gay soldier before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed, and the isolation he faced in the army, trying to open about who he was even before he was allowed to.
Last week Warner Bros really ramped up the promotion of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity with a trio of single-shot trailers that showed off the director’s attempt to tell the tale with as few cuts as possible (see them