“He was found guilty of TK, and sentenced to TK years” in prison, the line says. “TK” is journalistic shorthand for facts yet to come. The syntax suggests that Mr. Gibney doesn’t see much ahead. But it is Private Manning, even more than Mr. Assange, who has the breakout role in this first of several Hollywood films about the little-known people who grew larger than the most powerful of governments by using the Internet to broadcast their secrets. Set for debut at the Sundance Film Festival next month, “We Steal Secrets” is a collaboration between the producer Marc Shmuger, who until 2009 was a chairman of Universal Pictures, and Mr. Gibney, a prolific documentarian who won an Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side.” After leaving Universal, Mr. Shmuger started a film company, Global Produce. But he spent much of 2010 transfixed by reports about Mr. Assange, an Australian computer hacker who stepped into the limelight as a self-appointed czar of government and corporate transparency — and ultimately as a fugitive from authorities in Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning related to allegations of sexual assault. He is avoiding extradition from Britain by claiming asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London. Mr. Shmuger found an e-mail address for Mr. Gibney, whom he did not know, and proposed a documentary. Mr. Gibney, who had just finished “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer” and always has prospective projects to pursue, recalls trying to avoid adding this one. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time,” said Mr. Gibney, who spoke from New York this week in a joint interview with Mr. Shmuger, who is based here. But Mr. Gibney, like Mr. Shmuger, was soon captivated by the unlikely characters and bizarre narrative that are promising to make the WikiLeaks story the subject of not one movie, but many. “Underground: The Julian Assange Story,” an Australian television film about the young Mr. Assange, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. In January, DreamWorks Studios and Participant Media plan to begin shooting a dramatic feature film to be directed by Bill Condon. It will be based on a script by Josh Singer and two books: “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website,” by a former Assange colleague, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy,” by David Leigh and Luke Harding. HBO also had plans for an Assange movie, but Nancy Lesser, a spokeswoman for the channel, said the film has been delayed. Mark Boal, the writer and a producer of “Zero Dark Thirty,” continues to work on a possible Assange drama based on a New York Times Magazine article, “The Boy Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” by Bill Keller. In an e-mail, Mr. Keller, a former executive editor of The Times, said Mr. Boal recently asked whether he had any interest in writing the script for that one. “I told him I thought screenplays were outside my skill set,” Mr. Keller said. “We Steal Secrets” has moved more quickly than the dramas, threatening at times to outpace events. Mr. Manning’s trial, for instance, had been expected by some to occur this year. But it has been delayed — perhaps to keep it out of the presidential campaign, Mr. Gibney suggested this week — and is now scheduled for March. Focus Features expects to release “We Steal Secrets” through its FocusWorld label in the months after Sundance, which runs Jan. 17 to 27. Mr. Shmuger’s company will have another film, a comedy called “The Spectacular Now,” at the festival. Running more than two hours, the documentary is a relatively full retelling of Mr. Assange’s story. It ranges from his youthful hacking into a network connected to an American rocket launch, through an arrest for entering government and business computers in the 1990s, to his rise as the overlord of WikiLeaks, the online organization that helped whistle-blowers post documents while remaining anonymous. The film promises to break ground, particularly with its deep exploration of the sex case in Sweden. Mr. Gibney has asked to avoid spoilers on this point, but his narrative and supporting research are not friendly toward those who would see Sweden’s pursuit of Mr. Assange as cover for a supposed American agenda to prosecute or smear him. Mr. Gibney tells on-screen of rejecting Mr. Assange’s demands for money in exchange for an interview and says that the market rate for an interview was $1 million. Instead, that became an example of what one figure in the film calls “noble cause corruption” — a tendency to excuse transgressions supposedly done in the service of good. (A query was sent this week to an Assange representative for comment on this article, but Mr. Assange did not respond.) But the film also takes issue with what Mr. Gibney considers shabby treatment of Mr. Assange by The Times, which cooperated with him in publishing many WikiLeaks revelations, but later described him with what Mr. Gibney called “derision.” Mr. Keller, in his e-mail, said “being a source doesn’t buy you reverent treatment as a subject.” Mr. Assange’s release of secret documents, Mr. Keller added, is “entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the stories we wrote.” Still, it is Private Manning who steals the spotlight in “We Steal Secrets.” Relying in part on information from the legal proceeding against him, the film traces his loneliness and confusion over sexual identity, and his unease with conduct and incidents he saw described in secret documents. The film also deals with communications he had with a cyberfriend who ultimately betrayed him to authorities. Though widely condemned for perhaps exposing both civilians and government operatives around the world to mortal danger, Private Manning, in Mr. Gibney’s view, deserves empathy. “We explore him as a human being far more fully than anyone else has,” he said this week. In fact, Mr. Shmuger and Mr. Gibney have acquired rights to the book “Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History,” by Denver Nicks, and are hoping to give Mr. Manning a full-blown dramatic film of his own. “We’re looking for a screenwriter,” said Mr. Shmuger.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 21, 2012
An article on Thursday about the coming documentary “We Steal Secrets” and other films about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange referred imprecisely to a comment that Alex Gibney, the maker of “We Steal Secrets,” says in the film about Mr. Assange’s demands for money in exchange for collaborating on it. While he says that he rejected the demands, and that the market rate for an interview was $1 million, he does not specifically say that he rejected a demand from Mr. Assange for a $1 million fee for an interview. And a picture with the article, using information from a publicist, carried an erroneous credit. The picture, showing Mr. Assange seated, is by Focus World, not Focus Features.
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