Trauma Drama: More 9-11 Movies

Four years of the Bush administration's unrelenting 9-11–sploitation has finally persuaded Hollywood that it is not only safe to dramatize the trauma but that it might be profitable as well. Modestly titled World Trade Center, Oliver Stone's tale of heroic Port Authority cops is currently shooting on a back-lot ground zero and scheduled for a summer release. Sony's 102 Minutes, now in development, is also set within the Trades—a real-time drama that unfolds between the initial impact and the first tower's collapse. Real-time as well, Paul Greengrass's Flight 93 is set on the fourth hijacked jet, which crashed before it could reach Washington. (So far no one has signed on for the Pentagon story, although it's arguable that it was already dramatized in September 2003 by Showtime's DC 9/11: Day of Decision.) Fresh from Munich, Eric Roth is currently adapting Jonathan Safran Foer's post–9-11 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but as their titles suggest, the other films are strictly nonmetaphoric. In that, however, they may all be scooped by the six-hour ABC miniseries filmed last summer in Toronto and based, like the rival NBC miniseries it preempted, on the bestselling 9/11 Commission report.