By Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy, the screenwriters of The Fighter, have obtained the feature film rights to the book Boston Strong, a chronicle of the Boston Marathon bombing and the ensuing manhunt for Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The book is co-written by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, and is scheduled to be published next year.
It’s barely been three months since the attack, so this immediately strikes me as tacky even if Johnson and Tamasy have the best intentions in mind. That’s not to say that real-life events like this shouldn’t be depicted on film (I think Paul Greengrass’s United 93 is a great though difficult movie, for example), but waiting a while before picking up the film rights probably would have been more tactful.
What do you think about a possible film on the Boston Marathon bombing? Is it too soon to consider making one? Is there an unspoken statute of limitations when it comes to on-screen depictions of real-life tragedy?
[via Deadline]