UPDATE: Congressman Peter King has stated his reason for asking for an investigation. The letter appears below the original text.

BREAKING: New York-based congressman Peter King has called for an investigation into the Obama Administration’s cooperation with the untitled movie that The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are making about Navy SEAL Team 6’s hunt and eventual kill of 9/11 terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. The request came after a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd reporting that the film — which was acquired at auction by Sony Pictures before a script was completed — received cooperation and help in describing a mission that was classified. The filmmakers have just released the following statement:

“Our upcoming film project about the decade long pursuit of Bin Laden has been in the works for many years and integrates the collective efforts of three administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, as well as the cooperative strategies and implementation by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, the dangerous work of finding the world’s most wanted man was carried out by individuals in the military and intelligence communities who put their lives at risk for the greater good without regard for political affiliation. This was an American triumph, both heroic, and non-partisan and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise.” Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal.

The film is still casting up and Sony will release it Oct. 12, 2012, which falls smack in the middle of the Presidential election and likely has much to do with the complaint. The night that President Obama announced that bin Laden was killed, Deadline reported that Bigelow and Boal were already moving fast on a film that was being called Killing Bin Laden, one that focused on an earlier attempt by the Navy SEALs to finish off the Al-Qaeda leader. Deadline noted that they quite possibly had the hottest project in Hollywood, one that every studio in town was interested in. Megan Ellison’s Annapurna signed on to finance the film and Sony Pictures bought it at auction during the Cannes Film Festival. Clearly, they had already done a lot of research on the ground because they didn’t take that long to change the movie and add a satisfying ending. Boal has a foreign correspondent background, and he developed and used contacts in the military and the Middle East to shape The Hurt Locker.

The White House has knocked down the notion that the filmmakers were getting tipped secrets, with a spokesman calling it “ridiculous” and saying the filmmakers got no preferential treatment. This all sounds like a steaming pile of partisan politics to me, but it certainly will get a lot of attention. The military has made a practice of cooperating on gung-ho pictures in the past, lending know-how and making military hardware available on movies ranging from Pearl Harbor to Top Gun. Few pols have complained until now.

There will be plenty of upcoming appeals for cooperation by military mission films taking shape, including the upcoming Pete Berg-directed Lone Survivor, a fact-based tale about heroic Navy SEALs who struggled to survive after their covert mission in Afghanistan was compromised and they were forced to fight their way out of an ambush by Taliban forces. And let’s not forget about Act of Valor, a film completed about a Navy SEAL mission that featured a cast of actual Navy SEALs re-creating their exploits. That movie Relativity Media will release next President’s Day weekend. So it doesn’t seem like Bigelow and Boal are getting anything out of the ordinary. Divulging classified matter is a serious matter, but the film is a drama, not a documentary, and the facts behind the successful hunt of bin Laden have been widely reported by now.

“I would hope that as we face the continued threat from terrorism, the House Committee on Homeland Security would have more important topics to discuss than a movie,” White House Press secretary Jay Carney said.

Here is Rep. King’s letter: