Oren Moverman Logs On To THE TERRORIST SEARCH ENGINE

Having both been nominated for Oscars for their work on The Social Network, producer Scott Rudin and star Jesse Eisenberg may soon be re-teaming with Sony Pictures on the similarly internet titled The Terrorist Search Engine. The proposed movie is about Evan Kohlmann, a young counter-terrorism expert nicknamed 'the Doogie Howser of Terrorism'. Kohlmann's skills found him working for the F.B.I. as a consultant in his early 20's in a fight against global terrorism and he has since evolved into a witness for terrorism convictions, some of which are deemed controversial, as accusations have been made that the F.B.I. will wheel him out when they need a 'convenient' witness statement. The film is mostly based on a recent New York Magazine profile of Kohlmann. Deadline reports today that Oren Moverman, the Israeli-born and Oscar nominated director of The Messenger has just been hired to write (and probably direct) the film, which Eisenberg was linked to earlier in the year. Producer Rudin has made it clear that he wants to make the movie with his Social Network star and you can certainly see why the man who played Mark Zuckerberg would so aptly be a solid fit for this. Here's an image of Kohlmann taken from the NY Mag piece; We very much enjoyed The Messenger and we are super excited to see his follow-up Rampart that plays at the Toronto Film Festival next month and we hope he stays on to direct this. For whatever reason (I'm guessing to build up some cash so he can direct the kind of projects he really wants to make??) he has had a fancy for high-paid writing gigs lately, penning biopics of Kurt Cobain and Brian Wilson and now obviously this one, but at least we are told the idea is for Moverman to direct this, just the deal so far only covers the screenplay. If all goes to play, this one will film next year...