Depp To Produce Film On Poisoned Spy

Actor Johnny Depp is to produce a film about Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who was poisoned in London with a rare radioactive isotope as he investigated the assassination of a prominent Moscow journalist, the trade paper Variety reported.

Warner Bros. bought the film rights to a book on Litvinenko for Infinitum Nihil, Johnny Depp's production company, the paper reported on Friday. Depp will produce the film and could star in it, the report said.

Depp's representatives were not immediately available for comment.

The film will be based on a book by London-based New York Times journalist Alan Cowell, which is expected to be published next year, the report said.

Litvinenko died in November, several weeks after falling ill with what was later determined to be poisoning by the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210.

Litvinenko was a one-time agent in the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB — an agency that replaced the KGB — who broke with the agency and went to Britain, where he was granted asylum. In exile, he became a fierce Kremlin critic and wrote a book claiming that the FSB had bombed Russian apartment buildings in 1999 to blame the blasts on Chechen separatists and create a pretext for resuming the war in Chechnya.

Litvinenko said he fell ill after meeting in London with an Italian security expert to discuss possible suspects in the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya a month earlier. Politkovskaya was noted for her coverage of Chechnya, in which she was highly critical of alleged human rights violations by Russian forces and by Kremlin-backed Chechen officials.

In a deathbed statement, Litvinenko blamed the Kremlin for his poisoning. Russian officials have denied that allegation. British and Russian authorities continue to investigate his death.