BBC Motion Gallery Licenses Footage for Charlie Wilson’s War

BURBANK, January 2: BBC Motion Gallery, the stock footage
division of BBC Worldwide and the exclusive global representative for the CBS
News Archive, has licensed archival CBS News footage for use in Universal
Pictures’ new feature film Charlie Wilson’s War.

The production team on Charlie Wilson’s War has licensed more than 10 minutes of footage from
the CBS News Archive, featuring CBS coverage of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan—including footage of Dan Rather embedded with Afghan rebel
troops during the conflict. Additional footage from CBS newscasts featuring the
war appears throughout the film.

Directed by Mike Nichols, Charlie Wilson’s War is written by Aaron Sorkin and based on the
best-selling book by George Crile. It was released in theaters in the U.S. in
December 2007. Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman,
the film tells the true story of how a playboy congressman, a renegade CIA
agent and a beautiful Houston socialite joined forces to lead the largest and
most successful covert operation in history.

Other recent feature films featuring footage from BBC Motion
Gallery include Universal Pictures’ American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott, Columbia Pictures’ The
Brothers Solomon and the Julie
Taymore-directed Across the Universe.

“We’ve seen an increase in production teams for
documentaries and historical dramas coming to us for very specific footage,”
commented Jan Ross, the senior VP of the Americas at BBC Motion Gallery. “Not
only is it immensely rewarding to be able to hand off ready-to-use clips for a
production to utilize, but seeing how our material is integrated into the final
product is always extremely satisfying, especially for a project of this
caliber.”

—By Irene Lew