Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 American action thriller film about the special operations forces mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. The film is directed by Kathryn Bigelow with screenplay by Mark Boal, both associated with The Hurt Locker, another military action thriller. It will star Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton and Mark Strong.

The film, which was also referred to as the Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama bin Laden Film or Untitled International Thriller, was later reported by multiple sources to be titled Zero Dark Thirty. The title is not yet officially confirmed. Earlier it was sometimes referred as Kill Bin Laden and Hunt.

Shooting for the film is in progress at Chandigarh, India. Some parts of Chandigarh were turned into Lahore and Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was found and killed in May 2011. There have been reports of Right-wing Hindu protests against the Pakistani portrayal on Indian land.

U.S. President Barack Obama was accused of jeopardising US national security by giving Bigelow and her team "top-level access to the most classified mission in history" during their research for the film, but Bigelow denied favoritism by Obama.

Ian Matthias Bavitz (born June 5, 1976), better known by his stage name Aesop Rock, is an American hip hop artist and producer. He was at the forefront of the new wave of underground and alternative hip hop acts that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s (decade). He was signed to El-P's Definitive Jux label until it went on hiatus in 2010. The music site betterPropaganda ranked him at number 19 at the Top 100 Artists of the Decade. He is a member of the groups The Weathermen, Hail Mary Mallon (with Rob Sonic & DJ Big Wiz), and Two Of Every Animal (with Cage). Regarding his name, he said: "I acquired the name Aesop from a movie I had acted in with some friends. It was my character's name and it sort of stuck. The rock part came later just from throwing it in rhymes."

Bavitz was born at Syosset Hospital in Syosset, New York and raised in Northport, Long Island, New York to his father Paul and mother Jameija. Ian has two brothers: Chris (born 1975) and Graham (born 1977). Ian, along with his siblings, was raised Catholic but later on in his life became agnostic. Bavitz attended Northport High School in 1990 and graduated in 1994. He married Allyson Baker, guitarist and vocalist of rock band Dirty Ghosts in 2005. They now reside in San Francisco, California. The couple has now since divorced.

Christopher Pratt may refer to:

Mark Boal (born 1973) is an American journalist, screenwriter and film producer. He won Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture for The Hurt Locker (2009). His screenplay won six other major awards as well.

Mark Boal was born in 1973 in New York City. He attended Bronx High School of Science and was on the high school's Speech and Debate Team. He earned his undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in 1995.

Boal has worked as a freelance journalist and screenwriter. He has contributed articles to such magazines as The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and Playboy.

Boal's 2004 article "Death and Dishonor", about the 2003 murder of veteran Richard T. Davis after his return to the United States, was published in Playboy magazine. It inspired writer/director Paul Haggis, who adapted it for his fictional screenplay for the film In the Valley of Elah, which he also directed. Boal and Haggis have writing credit for the story.

As a journalist, Boal was embedded with troops and bomb squads in 2004 during the Iraq War. He wrote an article about one of the bomb experts, Sergeant Jeffrey S. Sarver, in an article entitled "The Man in the Bomb Suit", published in September 2005 in Playboy magazine.

Not to be confused with Mark Bowden, U.N. Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative for Somalia.

Mark Robert Bowden (born July 17, 1951) is an American writer and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he is a 1973 graduate of Loyola University Maryland. While at Loyola, he was inspired to embark on a journalistic career by reading Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In 2010, in his acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award at the National Book Awards, Wolfe called Bowden one of the two "writers to watch" (along with Michael Lewis).

From 1979-2003, Bowden was a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Over the years, he has written for The New Yorker, Men's Journal, The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, and Rolling Stone. Some of his awards are listed below.

As a result of his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, Bowden has received international recognition. The book was made into a 2001 movie directed by Ridley Scott.