Green Zone (film)

Green Zone
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Paul Greengrass
Written by	Brian Helgeland
Based on	Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Produced by	Tim Bevan Eric Fellner Lloyd Levin Paul Greengrass
Starring	Matt Damon Greg Kinnear Brendan Gleeson Amy Ryan Khalid Abdalla Jason Isaacs
Cinematography	Barry Ackroyd
Edited by	Christopher Rouse
Music by	John Powell
Production companies	Universal Pictures[1] StudioCanal[1] Relativity Media[1] Working Title Films[1] Dentsu[1] Antena 3 Films[1] KanZaman Productions[1]
Distributed by	Universal Pictures[2]
Release dates	February 26, 2010 (2010-02-26) (YIFFF) March 12, 2010 (2010-03-12) (United States and United Kingdom)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$100 million[2]
Box office	$94.9 million[2]

Green Zone is a 2010 British action thriller film^[3] directed by Paul Greengrass and written by Brian Helgeland, based on the 2006 non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The book documented life within the Green Zone in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[4]

The key players in the film are General Mohammed Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor), who is hiding in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, and US Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon), a Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) leader who is searching for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Miller finds that the majority of the intel given to him is inaccurate. His efforts to find the true story about the weapons are blocked by US Department of Defense official Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear). The cast also features Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, and Jason Isaacs.

The film was produced by Universal Pictures, StudioCanal, Relativity Media, Working Title Films, Antena 3 Films, Dentsu, and KanZaman Productions.^[5][1] Principal photography began in January 2008 in Spain, later moving to Morocco and the United Kingdom.

Green Zone premiered at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in Japan on 26 February 2010, and was released in Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Singapore on 11 March 2010, followed by a further 10 countries the next day, among them the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. The film generally received mixed critical reviews and was a box office bomb, having grossed only $94.9 million against a production budget of $100 million plus $40 million in marketing.^[2]