Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play Edward Snowden in a movie about the NSA whistleblower, Reuters reports.
Three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone will direct the movie, which goes into production in Munich, Germany, in January 2015.
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Stone has also written the screenplay, which is based on two books: The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena.
Stone is no stranger to politically-charged drama, having directed JFK, Born on the Fourth of July (for which he received an Oscar for directing) and Nixon. Gordon-Levitt, whose slight stature and occasional spectacle wearing, immediately evoke Snowden, has starred in blockbusters The Dark Knight Rises and Inception; he also played Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Lincoln, in Spielberg's biopic Lincoln.
An ex-CIA computer professional, Snowden acquired an estimated 1.7 million documents while working as a contractor for the National Security Agency. In June 2013, he disclosed thousands of classified documents to several media outlets, revealing NSA's global surveillance programs, including the Internet data mining program PRISM.
After leaving his Hawaii post in May 2013 on a leave of absence, he spent several months in Hong Kong before seeking an asylum in Russia. He was granted permission to stay in Russia for three more years in August 2014.
The famously reclusive Snowden gave his first U.S. TV interview in May 2014; he also appeared (through a satellite video link) at the 2014 TED conference in Vancouver, claiming the biggest revelations from the documents he had acquired are yet to come.