Shailene Woodley in Talks to Star in Oliver Stone's Snowden Film (Exclusive)

Woodley will play the girlfriend of the NSA whistleblower opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Shailene Woodley is in negotiations to play the female lead in Oliver Stone’s untitled Edward Snowden drama.

Woodley would star opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is tackling the NSA whistleblower in the film, which will be distributed by Open Road in the U.S. The actress, who has become one of the most in-demand among the twentysomething set after a breakout 2014, is poised to play the role of Snowden’s girlfriend.

The Divergent actress has been picky about lining up her next project outside of that futuristic YA franchise (she already shot the sequel Insurgent for Lionsgate and is signed on for two more films based on the Veronica Roth books). After starring in one of the most profitable films of the year, Fox 2000’s The Fault in Our Stars, she has sat on the sidelines waiting for her next move.

The Stone-directed project is based on Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man and Time of the Octopus, the upcoming novel from Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena.

Harding’s nonfiction book traces Snowden’s move from Hawaii to Hong Kong, where he met with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald and handed over top-secret NSA documents. Snowden later flew to Moscow, where he sought asylum. Kucherena’s take on the story is based on the lawyer’s time with Snowden while he waited in limbo at the Moscow airport before the Russian government decided to grant him asylum.

Wild Bunch had been preselling foreign rights to international buyers at the American Film Market last week in Santa Monica.

Stone is producing the untitled film with longtime producing partner Moritz Borman. The project is currently in preproduction in Germany with principal photography set to start in January.

Woodley is repped by Paradigm, Principato-Young and Felker Toczek.

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