Yesterday, it was announced that Warner Brothers had bought the rights to shoot a movie based on the death of Russian KJB agent Alexander Litvinenko late last year for Johnny Depp to produce and possibly star in. Unbelievably, early yesterday morning Columbia Pictures and Michael Mann paid half a million dollars for the rights to the upcoming book titled "Death of a Dissident". The book is currently been written by Alex Goldfrab and Litvinenko's widow. Michael Mann, the man who brought us the Ali biopic and was for a long time working on what finally became Scorsese's The Aviator is apparentaly in talks to direct. This changes everything I said yesterday about Depp's movie. I can't see it being shelved for a few years now, and the only outcome I can see of all this is a big race between the two studio's to get their movie into theatres the quickest. Does this rub anyone the wrong way? Some talk backers yesterday were saying it's way too soon for this movie, and I have to agree it probably is, but if the guy's widow is quite happy to co-write a book about Litvinenko's death and is happy to hand over the rights for cash, then who are we to argue? source - variety, coming soon