A timely film about the vital role of the press in keeping government honest is coming together with a powerhouse cast, reports Deadline, which added that “Steven Spielberg just said yes to direct Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in The Post, the spec script by Liz Hannah bought last fall by Amy Pascal’s Pascal Pictures. The deals are being negotiated. The film is a drama about the Washington Post’s role in exposing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and how the Post’s editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Kay Graham challenged the federal government over their right to publish them.”
The idea, continued Deadline, is for Sully star Hanks to play Bradlee, the editor who would figure in the movie classic All The President’s Men. Streep, coming off an Oscar nom for Florence Foster Jenkins, would play Graham.
“In an age where rampant web leaks of emails has left it difficult to figure out whether they are fair game or privacy invasion, the Pentagon Papers is the whistle blower equivalent of WWII, in how soldiers felt they were on the side of the angels fighting it. The classified study about the Vietnam War was commissioned by the Defense Department and revealed unreported facts about a secret dramatic escalation of troops and bombings in what was appearing to be an unwinnable war,” stated Deadline.
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