Annette Benning, Jon Hamm, Adam Driver, More to Star in CIA Drama The Torture Report

Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Adam Driver and Jennifer Morrison are currently in talks to star in a CIA drama tentatively titled The Torture Report, written and directed by Contagion and The Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, according to Deadline.

In December of 2014, a 500+ page report was released by the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee reporting intense accounts of interrogation tactics used on detainees. These tactics were employed by the CIA in face of the post-9/11 war on terror. Vice Media is financing the film, whose primary focus is the CIA’s rendition and interrogation programs of the early 2000s.

This would be a far more interesting idea if similar stories like this hadn’t already been made. In 2007, the Reese Witherspoon-helmed Rendition was literally about a Muslim man, married to Witherspoon’s character, being illegally detained due to post-9/11 paranoia. There was also the 2012 Kathryn Bigelow-directed, Oscar-winning Zero Dark Thirty, which recounted torture techniques used on terrorists that many critics considered too harsh to show. Regardless of one’s opinions on this issue, hopefully The Torture Report will bring something new to the table and not just retrace other films’ steps.

Bening is a four-time Oscar-nominated actress whose career spans over three decades. She most recently starred in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool with Jamie Bell and can be seen this May in a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull with Saoirse Ronan.

Hamm can be seen in the forthcoming thriller Beirut with Rosamund Pike, out next week. He also stars with Jeremy Renner and Ed Helms in the ensemble comedy Tag, out this June, and will appear opposite Natalie Portman in Noah Hawley’s true-life astronaut drama Pale Blue Dot, as well as in Amazon’s 2019 original limited series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens.

Drive broke out through his work on the HBO comedy Girls with Lena Dunham, but gained international stardom by playing Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars franchise. The Emmy-nominated actor also recently starred in Martin Scorsese’s Silence with Andrew Garfield, as well as last year’s Logan Lucky with Channing Tatum and Riley Keough. He can be seen late this year in Spike Lee’s Black Klansman with Topher Grace.

Morrison is coming off of six seasons of Once Upon a Time and just made her directorial debut with the Netflix film Sun Dogs, featuring newly crowned Oscar winner Allison Janney. She previously starred in Warrior with Tom Hardy, play James T. Kirk’s mother in Star Trek and recently starred in the Sundance-premiered Assassination Nation with It’s Bill Skarsgard.

Danny Gabai, Eddy Moretti, Jennifer Fox, Burns, Michael Sugar, Steven Soderbergh and Kerry Orent are set to produce The Torture Report.