MY MOVIE WEEKwith Mike Shaw

» It’s interesting how the news agenda can affect the movie world. The death of Osama Bin Laden has provided a new ending to a film about the terrorist’s life, which has been in the works for a number of years.

The film is tentatively titled Kill Bin Laden and was originally going to focus on an earlier failed, covert operation to take out Bin Laden, but will now be based around the highly risky overnight raid and intense 40-minute firefight in Pakistan that killed the leader of Al Qaeda.

Australian actor Joel Edgerton (Ned Kelly, Warrior, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) is in line to play the lead, and film-maker Kathryn Bigelow and producer/screenwriter Mark Boal – whose gritty Iraq war film The Hurt Locker won six Oscars in 2009 – plan to start shooting the action thriller this summer.

And it’s already not something I want to see. A sober look at the life and crimes of Bin Laden would be fascinating – his youth, his time spent in London, what drove him to fanaticism – but something with the title Kill Bin Laden certainly won’t be that kind of film.

This will be nauseating, self-congratulatory rubbish for uber-patriots. Aimed squarely at the people who charged down to Ground Zero last week to whoop, holler, wave flags and revel in the death of a man thousands of miles away.

A week ago, I would have expressed surprise that Kathryn Bigelow was attached to a project like this, but after seven days of witnessing various otherwise intelligent people high-fiving and chanting 'USA! USA!’, I suppose anything is possible when acting boorishly is regarded as a God-given right.

» Another recent example of how news influences movie-making decisions, lies with the nascent worldwide love affair with Pippa Middleton.

Since the royal wedding, editors have replaced pictures of popular glamour models with those of Kate’s younger sister, safe in the knowledge that she will provide a spike in sales. And so it follows that film-makers are eager to take advantage in similar fashion.

The producers of the unfathomably successful TV movie William & Kate are now turning their attention to Pippa and working on a film that will follow her life caught up in the whirlwind of her sister’s nuptials. Just like the original film, it will be terrible, but if they can rush it out fast enough, it’ll make loads of money.

Slightly less savoury is the announcement from American porn studio Vivid that they have offered Pippa $5m to appear on camera in “just one explicit scene”.

In a letter to Pippa, also released to the press, Vivid Entertainment’s Steven Hirsch wrote: “As far as I was concerned, you were the star of the recent Royal Wedding. As I watched a broadcast of the event, I couldn’t help but think that with your beauty and attitude, you could be an enormously successful adult star. This week, after seeing photos of you having a great time at a party, I decided to offer you a role in one of our upcoming movies.” I wonder whether she’ll accept....

» Of course, news is not solely used as a catalyst for creativity (Pippa Middleton’s porn career not included under the creative umbrella); it is sometimes used to prevent content that may be distressing from being released.

The most recent example of this was Warner’s decision to remove Clint Eastwood’s film Hereafter from Japanese cinemas due its opening scene of a tsunami and a catastrophic earthquake.

In newspapers and magazines, stories will be dropped because they coincide with unfortunate, albeit unconnected, events, and we have seen instances of movie releases postponed and soap storylines axed because of something that has happened in the real world.

However, there seems to be little point in removing something that is already out there. Hereafter had been in cinemas for a couple of weeks before Japan was struck with a series of natural disasters. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I was caught up in the horror, but the idea that the decision had more to do with studio execs realising that going to the cinema wasn’t really close to the top of anyone’s to-do list doesn’t seem entirely implausible.

Is it too cynical to suggest that pulling the film was more of a publicity exercise than genuinely having anything to do with protecting the Japanese people’s sensibilities?

After all, they have bigger things to worry about.