Paul Greengrass’ Next Film Will Be About the 2011 Norway Terrorist Attacks for Netflix

Here’s a new movie that sounds like a chipper, uplifting tale for our dark times: a terrorist drama from Paul Greengrass. Ah, I can feel the headache-induced nausea already!

After returning to the Bourne franchise with the unfortunate Jason Bourne last summer, Greengrass is lining up his next project, and it sounds nothing short of friggin’ intense. Deadline has news that the filmmaker will take on Anders Behring Breivik for his next project, a Norwegian right-wing Christian and anti-Muslim extremist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. The film, which Greengrass wrote the script for and Netflix just got rights to, will detail the events of the country’s deadliest terrorist attack since WWII. After committing multiple horrific acts, including detonating a bomb in Oslo outside of the prime minister’s headquarters, Breivik wrote a lengthy manifesto opposing Islam and Muslim immigration. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, and now he’s getting a movie made about him. Great!

The last thing most audiences want to do to escape the very real-world anti-Muslim legislations and present-day violence against minorities is to go watch a movie about just that. But I guess if anyone is going to tell such an upsetting story with charged intensity, Greengrass is your guy. (And maybe this is a movie best watched on your couch so you can pause and take mental health breaks.) Greengrass is no newcomer to political dramas either. His United 93 earned two Oscar nominations and his 2002 film Bloody Sunday took on the Northern Ireland protest and massacre of 1972.

Greengrass was expected to follow-up Jason Bourne with Paramount’s Ness, a film about Prohibition agent Elliot Ness written by Brian Helgeland. But now Deadline is reporting this untitled Netflix project will take its place. No word yet on whether Greengrass will still co-produce Ness, but keep your eyes our for more news on this new project once it kicks off production in the fall.