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‘Hurt Locker’ Screenwriter to Produce WikiLeaks Movie

Mark Boal, Management 360 and Financier Megan Ellison have optioned a ‘New York Times Magazine’ article about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Yet another WikiLeaks movie is in the works.

Management 360, "Hurt Locker" screenwriter Mark Boal and financier Megan Ellison have optioned a "New York Times Magazine" story about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, TheWrap confirmed.

Ellison, president of Annapurna Productions ("Main Street," "Passion Play," "Waking Madison") is fully funding the film. Mark Boal has not committed to write the movie.

This is the latest of several Assange and WikiLeaks movies under way. 

Former Universal Pictures Chairman Marc Shmuger and Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney are producing a documentary about Assange. Josephson Entertainment and Michelle Krumm Productions have optioned a still-to-be-published biography of the WikiLeaks boss, written by the Australian journalist Andrew Fowler.

The latest project is based on a story that Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote and was published online Jan. 26, an advance of the Jan. 30 edition. The article described the Times' and the British paper The Guardian's dealings with Assange.

Keller wrote that publishing WikiLeaks material "combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data.

"As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed a source who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimately openly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast of journalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the bounds of the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed as if they couldn't decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us."