MUMBAI: Angelina Jolie’s next film, based on the killing of journalist Daniel Pearl – A Mighty Heart, is scheduled to release in theaters across North America on 22 June this year.
The movie features Jolie as Mariane Pearl (wife of Daniel) and Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl (Capote). It also stars Irrfan Khan (The Namesake), Tony Award winner Denis O’Hare (Take Me Out), Archie Panjabi (Bend It Like Beckham), Will Patton (Remember The Titans), Pakistani television actor Adnan Siddiqui (Amer Bail), and Obie Award winner Gary Wilmes (Red Light Winter).
A Mighty Heart is directed by Michael Winterbottom (The Road To Guantanamo, Tristram Shandy) and produced by Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner for Plan B Entertainment and Andrew Eaton for Revolution Films.
Daniel Pearl, the South Asia Bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was researching a story on shoe bomber Richard Reid. The story drew them to Karachi where a go-between had promised access to an elusive source. As Danny left for the meeting, he told his wife Mariane that he might be late for dinner. He never returned.
In the face of death, Danny’s spirit of defiance and his unflinching belief in the power of journalism led Mariane to write about his disappearance, the intense effort to find him and his eventual murderer in her memoir A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl. Six months pregnant when the ordeal began, she was carrying a son that Danny hoped to name Adam. She wrote the book to introduce Adam to the father he would never meet. Transcending religion, race and nationality, Mariane’s courageous desire to rise above the bitterness and hatred that continues to plague this post 9/11 world, serves as the purest expression of the joy of life she and Danny shared.
