Kathryn Bigelow was working on her follow-up to The Hurt Locker in the spring of last year, and happened to be right on the tail of history as her movie about the assassination of Osama bin Laden dovetailed with the Al-Qaeda leader's real-life death. We still don't really know the details of the film, Zero Dark Thirty, or how much it will reveal about the real SEAL Team Six mission to kill bin Laden, but with the film set for release this December, the first trailer has debuted. And since they can't tell us a whole lot, they may as well take advantage of it and make the entire trailer look redacted. You can see what I mean when you watch the trailer below.
In an accompanying interview at Entertainment Weekly, director Bigelow says she made the project because of fascination with people like SEAL Team Six, "who dedicate themselves to really difficult and dangerous things for the greater good […] I personally want to know how they caught bin Laden. All I can do is hope that it interests other people.” Like other real-life dramas Apollo 13 or United 93, everyone already knows the ending of Zero Dark Thirty, but the story will be about more than bin Laden's death, chronicling the decade-long mission to kill the man behind the 9/11 attacks, and the fearless people who pulled it off.
And even with a release date scheduled for well after the November Presidential elections, Bigelow and her screenwriter collaborator Mark Boal are eager to distance themselves from any political messages: "There’s no political agenda in the film. Full stop. Period," says Boal. “A lot of people are going to be surprised when they see the film. For example, the president is not depicted in the movie. He’s just not in the movie.”
There's much more in the EW interview where that came from, including how bin Laden's death affected the film. Take a look and join us in anticipating Zero Dark Thirty's December 19 release.
