movie news: Kathryn Bigelow’s Bin Laden drama Zero Dark Thirty gets a trailer

It’s been four years since the director / writer team of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal caused the big upset and won the Oscar for The Hurt Locker and we’ve been wondering when we would finally get a peek at their next film. The project is a military and political thriller about the event leading up to and surrounding the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

It had been titled Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama bin Laden Film for some time however back in March the official title was revealed to be Zero Dark Thirty. What does Zero Dark Thirty mean? Bigelow herself told Entertainment Weekly that it’s a “military term for 30 minutes after midnight [as well as] the darkness and secrecy that cloaked the entire decade-long mission.”

For a film that hasn’t seemed to have run into any major snags along the way, it’s been quite a while in development. Obviously, the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 gave the film a set ending which may not have been planned however there were suggestions of a different reason. Rumours were abound that the film had been held up either by the Obama administration or by his supporters in an effort to have it released in October 2012 just before the US Presidential election in November.

I can only assume these were common smear tactics, as the film is now set for a December 2012 release, prime position in the Academy Award season.

As you might expect, the trailer reveals very little. Indeed, as far as I know, little has been revealed about how exactly Osama bin Laden was tracked and eventually killed. Who’s to know how much this film will really tell us? In any case, I am intrigued. The Hurt Locker was a solid thriller, hopefully Boal and Bigelow can pull it off again.

Even if I still think Avatar should have won the Oscar.