Cinematical

The wall has come down and the Cold War has been pushed into the decades-old past, but it's not completely gone. Heck, it definitely wasn't for the late Alexander Litvinenko -- an ex-KGB agent who was poisoned with polonium last November. Since then, a documentary called Rebellion: The Litvinenko Affair has debuted at Cannes, and both Johnny Depp and Michael Mann have been looking to make features on it since mid-January. While at the festival for the showing of the doc, Marina Litvinenko, Alexander's wife, has chatted about her husband's death and the projects based on his story.

In January, I posted that Depp's production company got the rights to Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy. The next day, Jessica Barnes shared news that Mann had been hired by Columbia Pictures for a competing film. Now the story is a little different. According to The Guardian, Warner Bros. has the rights to Marina's book about her husband -- Death of a Dissident -- with Michael Mann directing. To top that off, they claim that the widow has said that Depp will be playing the ex-KGB agent in the film. If this is right, I assume that he ditched the Cowell book in favor of the widow's? I imagine that the film will take a while to get to the screen, as developments continue to pop up. Most recently, Litvinenko's death has been linked to former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, and a formal request has been made for his extradition. So, Depp has had scissors for hands, Hunter S. Thompson and a famous, swashbuckling pirate. What are the chances that he can pull off a Russian ex-KGB agent? I'd say pretty darn good.