French sales agent-distributor-producer Wild Bunch has acquired international rights to sell Oliver Stone’s untitled Edward Snowden pic starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role. The project, currently in pre-production, starts principal photography in January in Munich.

As previously reported by Deadline, Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, sold film rights to his upcoming novel Time Of The Octopus to Stone and longtime producing partner Moritz Borman. Stone is using the novel as well as Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World’s Most Wanted Man as sources for the screenplay.

Stone is pipping Sony’s rival Snowden pic to the starting line. That studio acquired film rights to Pulitzer-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald’s upcoming book No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State. The movie is set to be produced by Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, producers of the James Bond spy franchise.