The Edward Snowden movie: soon at a theater near you!

Sony has acquired the right to the Snowden story, which will come via James Bond producers

In "seriously, what took you guys so long?" news, Hollywood is finally getting around to making a movie about everyone's favorite whistleblower and international fugitive, Edward Snowden.

Sony Pictures has picked up the rights to “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U. S. Surveillance State," the book written by former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, about Snowden's adventures exposing the secrets of the United States Government, according to a report out from the New York Times on Wednesday.

Greenwald, of course, was the writer of the original story and has become the man mostly closely associated with Snowden, as well as one of his loudest promoters.

I'm also sure I don't have to tell you that Snowden is the former NSA employee who leaked over a million documents exposing efforts by the United States government to gather intelligence on both its own citizens, as well as foreign leaders.

That included the ability to monitor offline computers by tapping into radio frequencies, which are transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards, that are inserted into said computers, as well as efforts to tamper with servers and routers in order to spy on people.

I usually don't find myself becoming too jazzed about movies involving people doing stuff on computers ("Oooooh, he's typing really fast! How exciting!") but this one sees tailor-made for the big screen.

Even better, the movie will reportedly be produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. If the name Broccoli sounds familiar to you at all, that is because the Broccoli family are the long-time producers of the James Bond movies, going all the way back to the very first in the series, "Dr. No," in 1963.

So, if nothing else, the movie should at least be feature some cool action. Maybe a fight on top of a moving train and, if we're lucky, an invisible car, as he makes his way to Russia while the U.S. government is hot on his tail? We can only hope.

Why did it take so long to get this train moving? It seems like studios have been trying to bid on the book for months, but there was some trepidation given that the story does not have an ending yet.

To wit, just last month, Snowden retained a Washington lawyer in hopes of reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutors. So, imagine that the movie had been made, and was just about to come out before that news hit. Just like that, it would have been out of date.

Sony seems like a good choice to handle this, though. I mean, they were behind both “The Social Network" and “Zero Dark Thirty,” two movies about timely subjects that turned out to be excellent movies.

At least, if nothing else, this one at least has to be better than that one they made about Julian Asange, right?

VatorNews has reached out to Sony to confirm the acquisition. We will update if we learn more.

(Image source: successfulworkplace.org)