Tuesday
12Aug2008
George Clooney's New 'Challenge'
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 6:36PM 
Never one to let a good political story go undetected,
George Clooney has acquired the rights to the
legal thriller The Challenge, Jonathan Mahler's book about the defense of
Salim Hamdam, bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden.
According to
Variety, Clooney will produce the film with
Grant Heslov under their Smoke House banner,
and there remains the strong possibility that Clooney could direct and possibly
star in the film, as well. In fact, there is plenty of speculation that Clooney
would play U.S. Navy lawyer Charles Swift, who along with Georgetown law
professor Neal Katyal, fought to ensure a fair trial for Hamdam.
Some observers feel that the demands and particular
nature of the case cost Swift his job and his marriage, which can certainly lend
itself to a Cloon-esque performance following his Oscar-nominated turn in
Michael Clayton.
On August 7th, Hamdan was sentenced by a panel of
military officers to 66 months in Guantanamo Bay, including time served.
Smoke House has plenty of politically-charged movies
coming to a theater near you: Escape From Tehran recounts the CIA's
bungled attempts to smuggle some American hostages out of Iran in 1979 under the
cover of a fake movie shoot; Men Who Stare at Goats is about the U.S.
Army's 1st Earth Battalion, which Variety says was authorized to use
paranormal powers (cool!), and Our Brand is Crisis, an adaptation of a
documentary covering the 2002 Bolivian presidential election in which one of the
candidates hired James Carville to help him win.
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