‘Snowden’ gets an unexpected Comic Con launch

Actors Zachary Quinto, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Shailene Woodley, launched the new Oliver Stone film 'Snowden' on Thursday (July 21) at this year's San Diego Comic Convention.

Written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald, 'Snowden' is based on the books 'The Snowden Files' by Luke Harding and 'Time of the Octopus' by Anatoly Kucherena, bringing to the big screen a biography of the whistleblower Edward Snowden. 

"This is the audience that should be most concerned about this issue of online privacy and surveillance and these are the people who are on the forefront of, you know, the technological consumer movement. So I feel like it's actually the perfect place to bring this film," said actor Zachary Quinto about why the film was launched at the Comi Con event.

The impact of social media and the Pokemon GO phenomenon—a wildly successful smartphone game based on cuddly cartoon monsters that has almost doubled Nintendo's market value since its U.S. release earlier in July—wasn't lost on Snowden's lead actor.

"I think it's made me pay more attention to what I do online, what I do with the internet, what I do with a computer and a phone and honestly only partially in relation to the government. Yes, there's the NSA and that's what, you know, Snowden was talking about, but what about what's going on with Google? What about what's going on with Facebook? 

"On the panel we just had, someone asked Oliver Stone a question about Pokemon Go and Oliver had a really pertinent thing to say, he's like, that program is tracking you everywhere you go and that information doesn't just disappearing into the ether, that information is catalogued and then sold," said actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The film follows Snowden, a computer professional who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) to The Guardian in 2013, while also dealing with his relationship with girlfriend Lindsay Mills.

"She actually had her boyfriend become the most wanted man in the world, for doing something that he felt was going to empower people, to at least have knowledge about what our government was doing. And whether you agree with him or not, doesn't matter, to me it's the bravery and the courage again and the selflessness that both of them had to endure and that both of them have to continue to portray is really, I'm just moved, I guess I'm just really moved," said actress Shailene Woodley of Mills.

"Snowden" is scheduled for release in North America on September 16. — Reuters