Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow has been working on her follow up to The Hurt Locker for a while now. It’s called Zero Dark Thirty and it’s about a group of Navy SEALs who hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.

The movie, which was written by Mark Boal, was actually re-written after word of Bin Laden’s death was announced. It looks like Bigelow got inside access from the White House to make her movie, which probably won’t come out before this November’s elections. Boal and Bigelow got to meet one of the mission planners from the mission. The meeting went down on July 15, 2011. From Politico:

The only thing we ask is that you not reveal his name in any way as a consultant, because again, it’s the same thing, he shouldn’t be talking out of school, this at least, this gives him one step removed and he knows what he can and can’ t say, but this way at least he can be as open as he can with you and it ought to meet your needs and give you lots of color.

They also had access to several high-ranking government officials and planning areas at the CIA, which included a mock-up of the compound Bin Laden was hanging out at in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Politico got the information via a transcript obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (huzzah!), which was filed by watchdog group Judicial Watch. You can read the transcript here. The meetings with the filmmakers were set up by former Al Gore aide lead Glover Park Group, which of course didn’t go down well with Republican Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King:

After reviewing these emails, I am even more concerned about the possible exposure of classified information to these filmmakers, who as far as I know, do not possess security clearances. The email messages indicate that the filmmakers were allowed an unprecedented visit to a classified facility so secret that its name is redacted in the released email.  If this facility is so secret that the name cannot even be seen by the public, then why in the world would the Obama Administration allow filmmakers to tour it?

One theory was that the Obama administration wanted the movie to serve as the ultimate political ad in November’s elections, as Maureen Dowd hints at in the New York Times. But hey, guess what – the movie now comes out December 17, well after the elections. So there goes that conspiracy theory.

So when you eventually see this movie you’ll know that it’s the real deal. It’s the closest thing possible to what really went down. Well, at least the second half of the film. Who knows what the beginning of the film is about. It could be about a group of chai salesmen in Pakistan who gear up and join the Navy because their career dream of joining the Glee Project fell through. [Politico via Vulture]

kathryn bigelow, zero dark thirty