Update (2/21/2015): Production company Open Road Films has made it official—Oliver Stone's Snowden will be released on December 25, 2015 with Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing today's most famous whistleblower.

SlashFilm has the scoop on the recent announcement, noting that while it's not unusual for release dates to shift, this initial plan indicates Open Road sees Snowden as a possible Oscar-contender. The cast list certainly supports such intent. In addition to Gordon-Levitt in the title role, the credits include Timothy Olyphant (Justified) as a CIA agent, Shailene Woodley (Divergent) as Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills, Melissa Leo (Treme among many others) as documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, Zachary Quinto (new Spock!!) as Glenn Greenwald, and Tom Wilkinson (most recently the author in Grand Budapest Hotel) as political reporter Ewen MacAskill.

Filming is already underway in Munich, according to SlashFilm. If everything pans out, Snowden could make it two years in a row for NSA drama at Hollywood's biggest night. Citizenfour, Poitras's documentary on Snowden, is up for an Oscar this weekend.

Original story (9/24/2014): This weekend, Hollywood insider's news source Deadline reported that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in talks to play security-contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden in an upcoming film directed by Oliver Stone. The film will be called The Snowden Files, sources say.

According to the Los Angeles Times , which confirmed that Gordon-Levitt was a shoe-in for the Snowden role, Sony is also working on a film based on Glen Greenwald's book No Place to Hide. Sony acquired the rights to that book earlier this year and named Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli as the producers. (The two also happen to be the producers of the James Bond franchise.)

Stone has purchased the rights to two books about the Snowden drama, which began in June 2013 when The Guardian published the first leaked documents revealing that federal authorities had been collecting vast amounts of metadata on phone calls through Verizon. One of those books is by Guardian journalist Luke Harding, called The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World’s Most Wanted Man. The other is called Time of the Octopus by Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena.

Oliver Stone is well known for left-leaning and politically oriented films such as JFK and W. As the LA Times notes, the film will likely paint a hero's portrait for Snowden. But the Times also writes that contemporary political thrillers are difficult to translate to the screen, with a recent movie about WikiLeaks grossing “a disappointing $8.5 million worldwide, on an estimated $28-million budget.” Ars also gave that film, called The Fifth Estate, a so-so review (despite starring British dreamboat Benedict Cumberbatch).