No sooner did we hear that Paul Greengrass received an Oscar nomination for Best Director this year for United 93, than he was already talking about his next potentially controversial project: a film about the war in Iraq. Greengrass is currently filming the third Bourne movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, but he recently revealed that he would like to write and direct a movie about events that took place after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The movie will probably be based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief. The book sounds pretty interesting actually; it’s not so much about the war itself as it is about the attempt to govern Iraq after the removal of Saddam, by forcing democracy and American culture on a Middle Eastern nation that was not ready for it. One thing’s for sure, Greengrass has stated that he does not support the war in Iraq (calling it “the most calamitous decision of our generation”) and is not likely to shy away from controversy here. After the realistic and cool-headed approach he took with United 93, I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

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