Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb

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74. 4/1/2014 Writer/Producer Peter Landesman Drops a Line

Peter Landesman Drops a Line

by
princessleia223
» 1 day ago (Mon Mar 31 2014 18:36:38) Flag ▼ | Reply |
IMDb member since March 2007

- Away from Parkland, you have penned the screenplay for Kill The Messenger. Can you tell me a little about that project?

Great film. It really is one of the great stories of our time. It is also a very personal one to me because it is about an investigative journalist, as I was, who inadvertently stumbled upon the CIA’s massive complictety in cocaine trafficking into the United States in the eighties, to support the war in Nicaragua. It was a terrible story because the cocaine that arrived in the United States inadvertently helped trigger the crack epidemic.

This reporter, who is working for a small paper, found this monster story, uncovers it, and writes it. At first, he is elevated and then destroyed: destroyed to the point where he killed himself because his life had been completely decimated for it. It is a story that resonates to me, because investigative journalism is an endangered species today.

Jeremy Renner plays the role of Gary Webb. It will be coming out in the Fall with Focus, and it will be interesting to see if it resonates with people, and if people care. It is just a terrific story in general.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/board/thread/227821762?d=227821762#227821762

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First Look: Jeremy Renner Blows the Whistle on a Sprawling Conspiracy in 'Kill The Messenger'

5 March 2014 1:30 PM, PST | Thompson on Hollywood | See recent Thompson on Hollywood news »

Focus Features has set a release date for "Homeland" executive producer and director Michael Cuesta's upcoming conspiracy thriller "Kill The Messenger," starring Jeremy Renner. Based on the true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, the film will hit select cities on October 10 before expanding on October 17, and again on the 24th. In the mid-1990s, Webb stumbled upon a massive coverup involving the CIA, which was allegedly using profits from the international drug trade to arm rebel fighters in Nicaragua. Webb kept digging the hole, ultimately unearthing a conspiracy that could only be described as "sprawling" -- a word on all our minds after last Sunday's conspiracy-loaded "True Detective." In "Kill The Messenger," directed by Cuesta from a screenplay by Peter Landesman, Renner stars as Webb, who was a San Jose Mercury-News scribe, opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Sheen, Robert Patrick, Michael K. Williams and Ray Liotta. It's a juicy cast, »

- Ryan Lattanzio

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/news?ref_=tt_nwr_1#ni56891456