Steven Spielberg Will Direct Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Pentagon Papers Film THE POST
Steven Spielberg is set to team up with Tom Hanks once again for a film project called The Post, which will also star Meryl Streep. This is a powerhouse of talent and it will tell the 1971 story of the Washington Post's role in exposing the Pentagon Papers and how "the Post’s editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Kay Graham challenged the federal government over their right to publish them."
According to Deadline, Hanks will take on the role of Bradlee, "the editor who would figure in the movie classic All The President’s Men," and Streep will take on the part of Graham. Thanks to the report, we have some detailed information on the history of the Pentagon Papers:
In an age where rampant web leaks of emails has left it difficult to figure out whether they are fair game or privacy invasion, the Pentagon Papers is the whistle blower equivalent of WWII, in how soldiers felt they were on the side of the angels fighting it. The classified study about the Vietnam War was commissioned by the Defense Department and revealed unreported facts about a secret dramatic escalation of troops and bombings in what was appearing to be an unwinnable war.
Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, pro-war when he started working on the study at the RAND Corporation, became convinced it should be absorbed to set future policy, and leaked the classified information to the New York Times. That paper published a scathing first installment that charged the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the public and to Congress about Vietnam.
When the incumbent Nixon administration Attorney General John Mitchell and Nixon failed to get the paper to stop, they got a federal court injunction forcing the Times to cease after three installments. The Washington Post grabbed the baton (Ellsberg gave the study to Bradlee) and published more revelations from the 47-volume study. Other papers including the Boston Globe jumped in, and Alaska U.S. Senator Mike Gravel read highlights aloud in a Senate subcommittee hearing. The floodgates had opened, and together the New York Times and Washington Post appealed to the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds. The justices ruled 6-3 that the government failed to prove a harm to national security and that publication was justified by the First Amendment.
Ellsberg was arrested and charged with conspiracy, espionage and theft of government property. While Ellsberg said he was willing to go to jail to stop an unjust war, charges against him were eventually dropped when the Watergate scandal revealed that staffers at the Nixon White House were involved in unlawful efforts to discredit him by burglarizing the office of his psychiatrist.
I love these kinds of movies! I don't know if you've ever seen All the President's Men, but if you haven't you should because it's a great film! With Spielberg, Hanks, and Streep bringing this new film, The Post, to the big screen, you can bet it's going to be great and it has all the making of a film that will nab an Oscar nomination.
Spielberg is currently in post-production on the Warner Bros. film Ready Player One and is also in pre-production on The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, which will star Mark Rylance and Oscar Isaac. After he's done with that, he'll get started on The Post.