Exciting news! We may be learning about a potential 'October Surprise' now-a forthcoming film about Obama's decision to deploy SEAL Team Six to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Note the release date, October 2012.
Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s forthcoming Osama bin Laden assassination movie—which is rumored to star Dennis Farina as Vice President Joe Biden, Garry Shandling as British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Vin Diesel as Man with Gun No. 2—has just been assigned a release date of October 12, 2012. Not only is October 12, 2012, just about the day it becomes O.K. to start thinking about Halloween, it’s also prime timing for the 2012 election’s October Surprise.
According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, the movie has become “the hottest project in town” since bin Laden’s death on May 2. In terms of publicity and rollout, Sony Pictures “is using a strategy similar to the one employed on The Social Network.” Let’s assume the film is a huge hit: Bigelow is not too far removed from her 2009 Oscar win, and interest in seeing the death of bin Laden is, as we know, appreciable. If the “Barack Obama” character is portrayed as a strong leader whose military savvy wrought great success and security, it could improve the president’s image among audience members. It might even convert some undecideds.
Even Maureen Dowd can't help notice the timing. Or the fact that the Obama Administration is giving the producers inside access to information about the mission:
The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.
The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.
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