Pat Dollard

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The Weekly Standard:

There may be an overtly political reason that moviegoers will be seeing the story of the Osama bin Laden raid just before they vote for president. Sony Pictures, the company distributing next year’s film, hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama on their studio’s premises in California last April. So far, Sony is the only major studio to hold a political fundraiser this cycle. According to Deadline Hollywood, Sony will release the bin Laden movie, directed by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, on October 12, 2012–less than a month before the presidential election.

“The eyebrow does go up when you see the release date,” says Douglas Urbanski, a Hollywood producer and conservative radio talk show host. Urbanski said he believes Bigelow’s movie will be straightforward and apolitical, much like her 2009 war film The Hurt Locker (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture). But Sony’s decision to release the bin Laden movie just weeks before the election, he says, is most likely “very, very deliberate.”

Urbanski was a producer for The Contender, a 2000 political thriller with a plot that sympathized with a sex scandal-plagued Democrat and demonized a conservative Republican member of Congress. The movie was released on October 13, 2000. “It was without a doubt a deliberate attempt to influence the election,” says Urbanski.

Sony Pictures could not immediately be reached for comment.

New York Daily News:

Congressman Peter King: Pentagon, CIA must investigate Obama

WASHINGTON – Rep. Pete King knocked President Obama over reports he green-lighted unprecedented access of the Navy SEALs crew who killed Osama bin Laden to Hollywood filmmakers.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who made 2008′s Iraq war drama “The Hurt Locker,” are behind the planned picture of the risky May raid.

The movie is scheduled for release on Oct. 12, 2012, less than a month before next year’s general election – an October surprise blown this week by the New York Times.

King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has demanded that Pentagon and CIA inspectors general investigate their access. He cited reports that Boal was on hand for a closed-door intel agency ceremony honoring the Bin Laden team, raising eyebrows in the room.

The schmoozing could risk lives and imperil the fight against an Al Qaeda that’s on the ropes, King wrote in a letter to the watchdogs.

The “alleged collaboration belies a desire for transparency in favor of a cinematographic view of history,” King wrote.

Leaders in the intelligence and defense communities often complain that while the presidential administration demand agencies shore up leaks, selected journalists get high-level access so politicians can craft public perceptions, and their legacies.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.