After Sept. 11, as Washington called on Hollywood to help with the war effort, films about U.S. foreign policy catastrophes lost their cachet.
But things may have shifted recently, as shown when "Black Hawk Down" opened wide to a weekend gross of $33 million. The story of the disastrous 1993 U.S. raid on Mogadishu, Somalia, based on the book by Mark Bowden, reminds execs there's a potentially big audience for hard-hitting, topical nonfiction about global events. It also put Bowden on the map as one of Hollywood's best resources on the subject.
Like Sebastian Junger ("The Perfect Storm") and Jon Krakauer ("Into Thin Air") who also write rugged, narrative nonfiction set in the world's most dangerous places, Bowden has execs fighting over rights to his work. His book "Killing Pablo" is set up at Miracle Entertainment, with Gregory Nava attached to direct and produce with Antonio Banderas.
This despite the fact that Bowden was a little-known Philadelphia Inquirer reporter for 20 years before writing his first book, and saw his "Black Hawk" manuscript rejected by several houses before it was published by independent Grove Atlantic.
It's much more difficult for a nonfiction writer to get to the point at which "the name of the author alone can carry a book," says Grove Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin. "There are a handful of writers who have done it, and he's approaching that level." "Black Hawk" sold 250,000 copies in hardcover and roughly 1.5 million as a Penguin paperback.
That's made Bowden invaluable on the "Black Hawk" film publicity circuit, where he's made stops with director Ridley Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to provide historical context.
The real test of Bowden's enduring appeal in Hollywood will come with the book he's now writing, which looks at a pivotal moment in the history of U.S. policy in the Islamic world -- the Iran hostage crisis.
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