6/15/2016

Steven Spielberg Plans Vietnam Era Walter Cronkite Film With 'Bridge Of Spies' Writer


Steven Spielberg already has more than a few irons on the fire, such as Ready Player One, Indiana Jones 5, and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (is Robopocalypse just never going to happen ever??), but he's still going to add one more. Deadline reports Spielberg is eyeing a film on legendary newsman, Walter Cronkite, but this won't be your standard biopic.

The film will see Spielberg reunited with Bridge of Spies writer Matt Charman, who is penning the screenplay now. The story would take place in the turbulent 1960s and follow Cronkite's changing opinion of the Vietnam War. He made one visit in 1965 that was staged to project progress to the media, so it could then be relayed to the American people who trusted TV journalists implicitly. But Cronkite journeyed back there just three years later to see things as they were following the Tet Offensive, and he came back home convinced the war was at best a stalemate. His words would go a long way in changing public opinion.

So who knows when this one will get going but it won't be for a long time yet. There's definite promise in the material and certainly it seems to be right in Spielberg's wheelhouse.