Director Oliver Stone said Thursday at Comic-Con that every major movie studio turned down his narrative film about Edward Snowden because of censorship from their corporate leaders.
Stone, who has chronicled many American conspiracies in his films, said he does not believe an entity like the National Security Agency is putting pressure on the studios, but the corporate boards who control them.
He got financing from France and Germany for the movie, which comes out Sept. 16 and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden.
Stone said he believes Snowden is still “a mystery” despite many interviews, articles and the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour exploring the former NSA contractor who leaked thousands of classified documents about the government’s surveillance programs.
Snowden now lives in Russia, and Stone met with him a number of times in Moscow, trying to gain his trust and decide whether to take on the project.