State of Play is a 2009 political thriller film directed by Kevin Macdonald. It is based on the 2003 British television serial of the same name. The film tells of journalist Cal McAffrey's (Russell Crowe) probe into the suspicious death of the assistant and mistress of Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). The supporting cast includes Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright, and Jeff Daniels.
Macdonald said that State of Play is influenced by the films of the 1970s. He explores the privatization of American Homeland Security and, to a minor extent, journalistic independence, along with the relationship between politicians and the press. Released in North America on April 17, 2009, by Universal Pictures, the film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $88 million worldwide.
Plot In Washington, D.C., a man with a metal briefcase kills fleeing thief Deshaun Stagg. A passing witness is shot and left in a coma. The next morning, Congressional aide Sonia Baker is killed by a Washington Metro train.
Sonia was chief researcher for Congressman Stephen Collins, as the chair of the Congressional committee investigating private defense contractors, including one named PointCorp. Stephen reveals to Cal McAffrey, senior reporter of the Washington Globe newspaper, that he had been having an affair with Sonia and does not believe that she was suicidal.
News blogger Della Frye, Cal's new recruit, reviews the Metro CCTV footage, which proves fruitless. Cal eventually finds Sonia's number in Deshaun's phone. A homeless teenage girl named Mandi seeks out Cal to sell him items from a bag stolen by Deshaun; they had been close friends. These items include covert photographs of Sonia meeting a well-dressed man and a gun with handmade hollow point bullets. While Cal meets up with Stephen's wife, Anne — with whom he had previously had an affair — he sends Della to the hospital, where the witness is coming out of his coma. However, a sniper kills the witness. Della realizes that she saw the killer at the hospital and in the Metro footage.
Stephen confirms that PointCorp is secretly the power behind other contractors, thus seeking a virtual monopoly on foreign and domestic government defense and security contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars. If Cal can prove that PointCorp had Sonia killed, Stephen will go public with his findings.
A PointCorp insider gives Cal a contact address, where he encounters the assassin, who shoots at him before fleeing. Detective Donald Bell informs Cal that Mandi has been found murdered. Sonia's flatmate, Rhonda Silver, identifies the well-dressed man as Dominic Foy, a PR executive at a subsidiary of PointCorp. Rhonda also says that she had a threesome with Sonia and Stephen and that the latter paid off Sonia's $40,000 of debt. Believing Rhonda to be lying, Cal resists Della's urge to publish.
Cal buttonholes Dominic at a diner and convinces him that he is in danger. His best protection is to make a statement on the record. Dominic reveals that Sonia was being paid $26,000 a month to spy on Stephen for PointCorp, but had fallen in love and had become pregnant with Stephen's child. Sonia was killed when she refused to continue spying. Cal plays the tape of the interview to Stephen, who lashes out at Cal for not telling him in person about the pregnancy. He accuses Cal of caring about his story above their friendship and storms off. That evening, Cal confronts Congressman George Fergus, the majority leader who had mentored Stephen and recommended Sonia to him. Cal reveals that he plans to run a story about Fergus' link with PointCorp and his undermining of Stephen's investigation.
Stephen and Anne later enter the Globe offices. Stephen confirms the story on PointCorp, his affair with Sonia, and his belief that PointCorp had her killed. Anne then tells Cal that Sonia slept with her husband "for $26,000 a month".
As the story goes to press, Cal realizes that the specific sum was never mentioned to Stephen. He recognizes the assassin as "Robert Bingham" in an old military group photograph featuring Stephen. He leaves, telling Della to hold the story. Cal confronts Stephen, who confirms that Bingham is an unstable veteran whose life he had saved in a war and whom he asked to follow Sonia, once he became suspicious of her. He says that he never asked him to kill her and initially thought, as did Cal, that PointCorp had done it. Cal says this is not about Fergus or PointCorp, but about decisions Stephen made that resulted in four deaths. Cal reveals that the police are already coming to arrest Stephen.
Leaving the building, Cal is confronted by Bingham. He attempts to kill Cal, but is shot dead by the approaching police. At the Globe, Cal types up the story headlined "Congressman Arrested". He puts Della's name first on the byline and has her submit the story for publication. The two then leave together.
Cast
Russell Crowe as Cal McAffrey Ben Affleck as Rep. Stephen Collins Rachel McAdams as Della Frye Helen Mirren as Cameron Lynne Robin Wright as Anne Collins Harry Lennix as Det. Donald Bell Jason Bateman as Dominic Foy Jeff Daniels as Rep. George Fergus Josh Mostel as Pete Wendy Makkena as Greer Thornton Maria Thayer as Sonia Baker Michael Jace as Stuart Brown Brennan Brown as Andrew Pell Michael Berresse as Robert Bingham Michael Weston as Hank Viola Davis as Dr. Judith Franklin Barry Shabaka Henley as Gene Stavitz David Harbour as PointCorp insider Zoe Lister-Jones as Jessy Katy Mixon as Rhonda Silver Sarah Lord as Mandi LaDell Preston as DeShaun Stagg
For the movie adaptation, certain names of characters were changed:
Della's surname was changed from "Smith" to "Frye". Cameron's surname was changed from "Foster" to "Lynne," and the character's gender was changed. Andrew's surname was changed from "Wilson" to "Pell". Det. Bell's first name was changed from "William" to "Donald".
Production Development The television miniseries was written by Paul Abbott and aired on British television channel BBC One in May and June 2003 and on BBC America in April 2004. Abbott was initially reluctant to sell the film rights to State of Play, fearing a compressed version of his miniseries would be unworkable, but in May 2004 he accepted a seven-figure Paramount Pictures-backed bid led by producer Scott Rudin. The bid prevailed over an offer from Andrew Hauptman's Mission Pictures (backed by Warner Bros.), but the deal fell through before completion. After a second bidding war, Mission acquired the rights for Universal Pictures in December 2004.
Director Kevin Macdonald had long been attached to the project; however, an early report suggested screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan was set to make the film his directorial debut. Macdonald was a fan of the original miniseries, and said it would be a "hard act to follow".
He said the blend of fiction and the topical subjects of journalism and politics attracted him to the project, adding that he wanted to examine how American and European societies learn what is happening in the world and to what degree newspapers and the nightly news could be trusted. He said that in an age when people read fewer newspapers, he wanted to explore the necessity for reliable information and the threat to the journalistic profession from collusion between reporters and politicians, and that the film would "[ask] questions of how independent the press is, how much real investigating is conducted, and how much is taken on faith from lobbyists or PR sheets." Macdonald cited the films of the 1970s, All the President's Men in particular, as major influences, saying that while he was scared of comparisons with the film account of the Watergate scandal, State of Play would primarily be a piece of entertainment.
According to Carnahan, the story's core issue (and the main factor behind his desire to write the adaptation) was the question it raised about whether a person would be justified in doing "a pretty awful thing" if performing great deeds in other areas of their life. Carnahan began working on revisions to his script with Macdonald, but the process was disrupted when Carnahan's daughter fell ill. When he chose to concentrate his time on his family, the task was handed to screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who performed a small rewrite based upon Carnahan's notes. He is known for the Bourne film series. Further rewrites were carried out by Peter Morgan, screenwriter of The Queen and writer/director Billy Ray, associated with Shattered Glass.
The film was made for Universal Pictures by Working Title Films. Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan produced for Working Title, alongside E. Bennett Walsh, and Andell Entertainment's Andrew Hauptman and Eric Hayes. Paul Abbott served as executive producer alongside Liza Chasin and Debra Hayward. Kristen Lowe and Maradith Frenkel were overseers for the studio. State of Play was to be released in the United States toward the end of 2008, but the delayed start to production saw the date changed to April 17, 2009. State of Play was released in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2009, and was released in Australia on May 28, 2009.
Casting
Brad Pitt had a long association with the main role. He was initially attracted to the project after watching Macdonald's documentary Touching the Void (2003), (web archive link) and had enjoyed the director's film The Last King of Scotland (2006). Macdonald had also been working with Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment on a potential future project.
Pitt officially committed to star in State of Play in August 2007 after a Tony Gilroy script rewrite was completed. He visited the newsroom of The Washington Post with Macdonald in September 2007 to research the role, spending four hours "talking shop" with political and investigative reporters. But one week before filming was to begin in November 2007, he left the production.
Producer Eric Fellner attempted to convince Pitt to remain in the film, but Pitt disagreed with changes that the studio had made to the script since he originally agreed to star. Talent agency CAA (which represents Pitt) maintained that he never signed off on the changes; Macdonald delayed filming by a week to perform a scene-by-scene review of the script with Pitt; by the end, the director told the actor "I don't think we want to make the same film." When Pitt decided to drop out of the film, he called the director to tell him. Pitt preferred a version closer to the original Carnahan draft and wanted to postpone filming until after the resolution of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which would have enabled a further rewrite. The studio preferred to press on with production; initially, it said it intended to sue Pitt for reneging on his "pay or play" deal, which would have earned him $20 million. Settlement talks later led to a thawing of relations between the parties. Pitt later said of the situation: "I had definite beliefs of what [the film] should be, and the director had his definite beliefs [and] we got up against this writers' strike where we couldn't fuse the two."