We've known for months now that Kathryn Bigelow's next film will be about SEAL Team Six, the squadron that managed to find and kill Osama bin Laden. We've known that the project will reunite Bigelow with writer Mark Boal, who won an Oscar for his Hurt Locker script. We've known that the film will star Jessica Chastain, Chris Pratt, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Nash Edgerton, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler and Fares Fares. We've known that the movie will be released on December 19th. Despite all of that, though, one key piece of the puzzle has been missing: the goddamn title. As the aforementioned information has leaked out we've called the movie things like Untitled Bin Laden Thriller or, more colloquially, Kill Bin Laden, but the actual title has been a mystery...one that has finally been solved.
According to Reuters, Bigelow's project, which has moved into the production phase, is using the title Zero Dark Thirty. While that kind of sounds like nonsense, in military-speak it's defined as "a very early starting time" or 30 minutes after midnight. But while having a title for the movie is nice, sadly the site also has some bad news. As first reported yesterday, the title is currently filming in India, but the new story says that the production has caused conflict in the country. In an act of protest, members of the right wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad stormed the set in Chandigarh today. The reason for the protest is that they don't like India being used as a stand-in for Pakistan, which they see as their "sworn enemy."
When asked for comment, Vijay Bhardwaj, a leader of the radical Vishva Hindu Parishad, said "They have made Chandigarh like Pakistan, as if it is Pakistan. We strongly oppose this and we will not let them put Pakistani flags here and we will not let them shoot for the film." The article doesn't say how the production is handling the protest, though it does say that the police were brought in to intervene.
