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Depp to Play Poisoned Russian Ex-Spy

I knew that this would be the perfect story for Hollywood! He is

producing it but he doesn't have the rights to the book that is being

written by the widow, Michael Mann jumped on that right away and

outbid everyone:

Johnny Depp is planning a film about a former Russian security

agent whose poisoning in London has touched off an international

mystery, according to the trade magazine Variety one of three

possible Hollywood projects about the case.

One of the other projects, involving the director Michael Mann,

came after Columbia Pictures agreed to pay $1.5 million for the

film rights to a book about the former Russian agent, Alexander

Litvinenko, being co-written by his widow and a close friend, the

report said.

Warner Bros., which was outbid for that book, acquired the rights

to a book by Alan Cowell, a New York Times reporter, which is

expected to be published next year by Doubleday, Variety said.

Depp's production company, Infinitum Nihil, will produce the film

and the actor could star in it.

[...]

Litvinenko fled to Britain, was granted asylum and became a Kremlin

critic in exile. The former FSB agent died in November, several

weeks after falling ill with what was later determined to be

poisoning by the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210.

Before his death, he said he fell ill after meeting in London with

an Italian security expert to discuss possible suspects in the

killing of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya a month

earlier. In her coverage of Chechnya, Politkovskaya was highly

critical of alleged human rights violations by Russian forces and

by Kremlin-backed Chechen officials.