One of the more controversial screenplays of the 2012 award contenders was also the only screenplay of the ten Oscar-nominated screenplays not available for legal download for your consideration. Until now. Thanks to Sony Pictures, Mark Boal's screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty has been declassified and put online for dissemination, dissection, and analysis by screenwriting aficionados, and perhaps a few U.S. senators and representatives, too (or at least their aides).
Here's a trailer for Zero Dark Thirty, currently in theatres across the U.S.:
While Chris Terrio's script for Argo gets knocks for being too Hollywood with its depiction of the CIA's rescue mission of six hostages hiding in the Canadian embassy during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, Mark Boal's screenplay is getting attacked for its portrayal of the use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the government's search for information to find the elusive Osama bin Laden (or Usama bin Laden or UBL as the screenplay refers to him). Boal has even hired insider Washington attorney Jeffrey H. Smith to represent him and negotiate his way around Congressional accusations of too much access to the CIA and the Pentagon during his research for the screenplay.
Fact or fiction, here is a link to Mark Boal's screenplay:
- Zero Dark Thirty, written by Mark Boal
As always, please use this screenplay for your educational purposes only, and don't wait to download the screenplay as we never know when it will go offline.
If you are looking for the other nine Oscar-nominated screenplays as well as many more scripts from 2012 that were vying for awards attention, you can find them at our previous posts below:
- Life of Pi
- Argo
- Django Unchained
- Looper
- Flight, Wreck-It-Ralph, Promised Land and Hyde Park on Hudson
- Silver Linings Playbook, The Master and Quartet
- Middle of Nowhere, Lincoln, Les Misérables and Frankenweenie
- Amour
- Rust and Bone and Anna Karenina
- Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Sessions, Hitchcock and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
- Arbitrage and Perks of Being a Wallflower
- Smashed and Celeste and Jesse Forever
- Moonrise Kingdom, Paranorman, The Lorax, Snow White and the Huntsman, Ted and This is 40
Does Mark Boal's screenplay shed any new light on the story behind Zero Dark Thirty for you? Share your thoughts with us in the Comments.
Link: Sony Pictures Awards: Zero Dark Thirty For Your Consideration
