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Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is.
Trivias:
Joel Edgerton was originally cast in a leading role, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts and was replaced by Jason Clarke. However, when the conflicts were resolved, Edgerton was able to return in another role.
Rooney Mara was originally cast but had to drop out and was replaced by Jessica Chastain.
At one point, Tom Hardy, Idris Elba and Guy Pearce were considered for different roles. Hardy was replaced by Mark Strong.
"Zero Dark Thirty" in military terms means 12:30 AM. Zero Dark is midnight, 00:00 on a 24 hour clock, 30 being added to connote 30 minutes past. In the scene during the raid you can see Maya look at the clock being shown as 00:30.
The movie was originally about the unsuccessful decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden. The screenplay was completely re-written after bin Laden was killed.
James Cameron, ex-husband of eventual director Kathryn Bigelow, was previously in negotiations to direct the film, but dropped out to produce the sequels to Avatar.
This is Jeremy Hindle 's first feature-film work as production designer. Hindle previously collaborated with Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser on numerous TV commercial shoots. Director Bigelow lauded Hindle for his remarkably precise re-creation of the huge bin Laden compound - built from scratch in the Jordanian desert - in less than three months.
Jordan and the Indian city Chandigarh (capital of Punjab & Haryana states), near the Pakistani border, were used as stand-ins to duplicate scenes taking place in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some second-unit film footage was also actually shot in Pakistan.
In 'No Easy Day,' the first-hand account of the attack and killing of Osama bin Laden, written by a member of the SEALs team, the movie's lead character of CIA agent Maya, is known only as 'Jen.'
The climactic sequence devoted to the raid on Osama's compound runs about 25 minutes, only a few minutes less than the real-life SEALs assault.
In an unusual step, acting CIA Director Michael Morell issued a statement about the film emphasizing that while the production team had met with the CIA, the film is a dramatization and is not historically accurate. Morell specifically contradicted the film's assertion that "enhanced interrogation techniques", also known as "torture", had been of significant benefit in locating Osama bin Laden. Director Morell stated, "That impression is false. We cannot allow a Hollywood film to cloud our memory."
In the Kuwait Lamborghini showroom scene, Dan asks if one of the cars is a Balboni. This refers to the Gallardo LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni, a limited-production variant of the Gallardo named after a Lamborghini test driver. It is the car with the stripe along its centerline.
The stealth helicopters used in the actual mission were heavily modified Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks. Anti-radar cladding, like that of the F-117 stealth fighter, helped them avoid detection by Pakistani air defenses, and the extra blades in the main rotors and tail rotors produced less noise than the standard rotors.
Several important factors in the preparation and execution of the raid, as detailed in the book "No Easy Day", were glossed over or not mentioned in this film. These include, specifically, 1) the debate over whether to bomb the compound or conduct a special forces raid, 2) the construction of a complete training mockup of the compound in North Carolina and repeated drills using the same SEAL teams and helicopters as on the eventual raid, and 3) the presence of backup Black Hawks at a forward staging area during the mission, which proved to be vital to recovering the team after the crash of the stealth Black Hawk during the initial insertion. It is assumed these were left out for dramatic purposes.
The bizarre, four-lens night vision goggles worn by SEAL Team Six are in fact, authentic. They are cutting-edge GPNVG-18 (Ground Panoramic Night Vision Goggles) manufactured by L-3 Warrior Systems. The extra lenses provide more peripheral vision to the operator.
Of the many books she researched in preparation for her role as CIA operative Maya, Jessica Chastain found two of particular interest, namely, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright and "Osama Bin Laden" by Michael Scheuer.
Jessica Chastain has permanently saved a voice mail from director Kathryn Bigelow in which Chastain learned she had been chosen to play the role of Maya. The message came on November 21, 2011 at 1:04 p.m.
In January 2013, on the brink of the movie's wider release, three politically active members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Martin Sheen, David Clennon and Edward Asner, announced they were organizing a public condemnation of Zero Dark Thirty for what they termed its "tolerance" of torture.
The film's title has four meanings according to a publicity flier for the picture. It states: "ZERO DARK THIRTY is a military term for thirty minutes after midnight - as well as code for "under the cover of darkness." It is also the time that the Navy Seals helicopters took to the skies on their mission to eliminate the world's most wanted man [Osama bin Laden]. Finally, it serves as a metaphor for the decade long, relentless pursuit of Osama bin Laden".
The writer, director and producer and many of the production crew all worked on the earlier film The Hurt Locker.
This movie depicts a high-level CIA official (known in the film as "The Wolf" and played by Fredric Lehne) as a devout Muslim. This corresponds with a March 24, 2012, Washington Post article titled "At CIA, a Convert to Islam Leads the Terrorism Hunt," which (pseudonymously) profiles "Roger," the chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and identifies him as an adult convert to Islam.
James Gandolfini, who portrays former CIA head Leon Panetta, sent a note to Panetta before the film came out: "I'm very sorry about everything. I apologize. You're like my father, so you'll find something to be angry about, but please let me know." For months, silence. Then, as the film was in the middle of awards season in early January, screenwriter Mark Boal told Gandolfini, "Leon Panetta would like your phone number because he doesn't know how to get in touch with you." The actor was surprised. "He's the head of the CIA! He can't find me? Come on, really?!"
The person who is the subject of the manhunt at the center of this movie is referred to interchangeably as "Osama bin Laden" and "UBL" (for "Usama bin Laden"). The reason for this inconsistency is the real-life fact that there is no one, standard system for transliterating languages that use non-Latinate alphabets (such as Arabic or Hebrew) into English. Since the events of September 11, 2001, "Osama" has been the most common rendering of his first name in the American press, but "Usama" is the version that has always been more commonly used by the intelligence community.
Although the breed of dog used in the film is listed as a factual error, (the breed of dog used in the actual capture of Osama Bin Laden was a Belgian Malinois. The breed of dog used in the movie is a German Shepherd.) The director, Kathryn Bigelow, owns German Shepherds, which may explain the dog's appearance in the movie.
Kathryn Bigelow decided to offer the lead role of Maya to Jessica Chastain after seeing an early cut of Coriolanus.