[A-List] Hollywood studios battle to make Litvinenko film

["Jim Yarker" <sjy_estrien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hollywood studios battle to make Litvinenko film
by Luke Harding
19 January 2007, Guardian



It has all of the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster: a mysterious and 
gruesome death by poisoning, several shadowy ex-spies, plenty of political 
intrigue - and a London sushi bar.
In fact, no fewer than three Hollywood studios are bidding to make a film 
about the life and death of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident 
killed last November by a dose of polonium.

Scotland Yard may not yet have uncovered Litvinenko's killers, who appear to 
have slipped the radioactive substance into his tea during a meeting on 
November 1. But this has not deterred Warner Bros and the actor Johnny Depp 
from snapping up film rights to a forthcoming book about Litvinenko's 
murder.

At the same time, Colombia Pictures and the director Michael Mann have paid 
$1.5m (£760,000) for the rights to another book being written by 
Litvinenko's widow, Marina, and friend Alex Goldfarb, the magazine Variety 
said. Their book is expected to appear in May, it added.

Both studios are up against Braun Entertainment. Last weekend the group 
announced it had bought the rights to Litvinenko's own book, published in 
2004, in which he accuses Russia's intelligence service, the FSB, of blowing 
up Moscow apartment blocks then blaming the carnage on Chechen separatists.

Yesterday Alan Cowell, a London-based journalist whose book on Litvinenko 
has been bought by Warner Bros, said the interest was hardly surprising. 
"The fact remains that a British citizen was poisoned in a fairly ghastly 
way in the centre of London, 100 yards away from the US embassy," he said. 
"It's a very dramatic and compelling story. Obviously Litvinenko was a 
complicated and complex person. Playing him will be a challenge for any 
actor. This guy is not a cardboard cutout of a KGB heavy."

Warner Bros purchased Cowell's book for Depp's production company. Depp 
would produce the film and could star in it, Variety said. Russian 
newspapers speculated that James Bond actor Daniel Craig could also play the 
dissident.

This week, Russian prosecutors said Scotland Yard planned to return to 
Moscow after a seemingly fruitless trip last year. Russian officials have 
suggested Litvinenko's murder was the work of dissidents keen to discredit 
the Kremlin.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1993927,00.html