8 years ago
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Film dramatizing bin Laden raid airing Nov. 4
A film dramatizing the death of Osama bin Laden is set
to debut next month on the National Geographic Channel, two days before
the presidential election."Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin
Laden," from The Weinstein Co. and Voltage Pictures, will air Sunday,
Nov. 4, the channel said Thursday.
President Barack Obama faces
Republican challenger Mitt Romney at the polls two days later.
Weinstein
co-chairman Harvey Weinstein is a prominent fundraiser for Obama's
re-election campaign, which has touted bin Laden's death as an example
of the president's leadership.
National Geographic Channel chose
the film's debut date to help promote the start of its fall season,
channel President Howard T. Owens said Thursday.
"Harvey obviously
doesn't schedule our network," Owens said. He added that the channel is
"not political. We are opportunistic from a programming perspective."
National
Geographic Channel did take into account Weinstein's desire to get out
ahead of a competitive movie about the U.S. Navy SEALs' hunt for the
al-Qaida leader, Owens said.
"Zero Dark Thirty," from director
Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who won Oscars for "The Hurt
Locker," is scheduled to be released in theaters at the end of the
year.
"Seal Team Six," directed by John Stockwell ("Into the
Blue"), also was intended for a big-screen release until the channel
made what it called a "preemptive bid" for it. The film will be
available to Netflix U.S. subscribers a day after its premiere.
Owens
said he and Weinstein have a previous business relationship: Owens
represented Miramax Television while working at the William Morris
Agency.
"Seal Team Six," whose cast includes Cam Gigandet, Anson
Mount, Freddy Rodriquez and Xzibit, is the channel's first original film
drawn from real events and is part of a programming expansion that
includes the recently announced "Killing Lincoln," based on Bill
O'Reilly's best-selling book.
The depiction of the bin Laden raid
in Pakistan was vetted by experts that included a recently retired Navy
SEAL and a bin Laden historian, the channel said.
"While some
aspects of the characterizations have been dramatized for creative
reasons, the core story is an accurate portrayal of an event that ended
the longest manhunt in American history," according to a news release
from the channel.
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