‘Snowden’ Movie: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Oliver Stone reveals all the work he had to go through to make Snowden.

When Edward Snowden broke the news about the mass surveillance of American citizens, Snowden quickly became the most wanted man in the world. It’s not a surprise that Hollywood wanted to recreate the dynamic escape and the controversy a single civilian contractor caused. Oliver Stone, the director of the critically acclaimed conspiracy theorist movie JFK, decided to helm the upcoming Snowden movie. And it wasn’t all peaches and cream.

According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, the cast and crew of Snowden was personally afraid that the National Security Agency was going to come after them.

5. Cast and crew moved to Germany to film Snowden

“We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in the U.S.,” Stone said on March 6, speaking before an audience at the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, in a Q&A. “We felt like we were at risk here. We didn’t know what the NSA might do, so we ended up in Munich, which was a beautiful experience.”

4. Oliver Stone met with Edward Snowden

In order to prepare for the movie, Oliver Stone met with Edward Snowden to discuss the movie. “We met with him many times in Moscow, and we did a lot more research, and we went ahead.” He added, “I think he’s a historical figure of great consequence.”

However, it was difficult to film certain scenes as BMW didn’t want to get involved in the movie. More specifically, they didn’t want their car’s name in the movie.

3. Actors didn’t want to work on the movie

In addition, movie studios didn’t want to finance the project and actors didn’t want to star in the movie.

 “It was extremely difficult to finance, extremely difficult to cast. We were doing another one of these numbers I had done before, where pre-production is paid for by essentially the producer and myself, where you’re living on a credit card,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt said.

2. American studios didn’t want to finance the movie

Eventually, financing would come from France and Germany. “It’s a very strange thing to do [a story about] an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that’s very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American.

1. Snowden hits theaters on September 16th

You can read the full report here. Snowden opens in the U.S. on September 16.

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