The Slow Leak

Even as the news media awaits a jury verdict in the trial of Lewis Libby out of the CIA leak investigation...The couple at the center of the political storm--Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame (pictured)--are going to have their side of the story told in a feature film, being developed at Warner Bros...


Michael Fleming of Variety:

..Plame's status as a CIA agent was revealed by White House officials allegedly out to discredit her husband after he wrote a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece saying that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The film is a co-production between Weed Road's Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker of Zucker Productions.

Jez and John Butterworth are writing the screenplay.

WB has secured the life rights of Plame and Wilson. Studio also will use Plame's memoir, "Fair Game," if the CIA permits her to publish it. Plame made a reported publishing deal in the $2.5 million range last year, and Simon & Schuster is expected to publish late this year. While it would be ironic for Plame's story to be illegally leaked by the White House, only to have another government branch deny her the right to tell it herself, the CIA has the latitude to silence Plame.

She left the agency in late 2005 and she and Wilson have filed a civil lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff for Cheney who's currently on trial, defending himself against charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents who were investigating the leak of Plame's identity to journalists.
Jerry and Janet Zucker, who got to know Plame and Wilson because all four are involved in stem cell politics, said that the fate of the book won't determine the fate of the film.

"Almost everything that we need for the movie is available from print outlets, and obviously we haven't read the book yet because it hasn't been approved by the CIA," Jerry Zucker said. "Valerie has been incredibly careful with what she tells us, it's almost like she is still working for the CIA. The biggest element of the movie to us is the story of two people who spent their lives in service of their government, and were then betrayed by that government."

The Butterworth brothers recently completed "Superbad," a James Brown biopic that Spike Lee will direct for Universal and Imagine.

Here's the latest on the Libby Trial as of Friday...

The entire story has been very muddled from the start...Who talked to whom and when? Was Plame already "outed" before this actually made news? Was she really undercover? Did the Bush Administration leak her name to members of the press as a way of scolding Wilson for that New York Times Op Ed piece about Iraq?

Who knows?

But given Hollywood's feelings of overall disdain and hatred for Bush and Cheney, I am actually surprised, it took this long for Wilson and Plame to strike a deal for their story to be made into a movie.

I see Robert De Niro playing Joe Wilson and Ashley Judd as Valerie Plame...