New movie to bring story of Boston Marathon bombing to life, so that people of today can experience it

By Sean O'Neal | July 8, 2013 | 10:17pm

Aux Features Film

With three months now passed since the Boston Marathon bombing, the details of that day have, naturally, been lost to the ages, capable of being summoned by only the most dedicated scholars of history. But soon, as with so many events shrouded and distorted by misty memory, they will be brought to cinematic life, so that we may experience them again—and, arguably, for the first time: The Fighter screenwriters Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy are hoping to return to that film’s milieu by optioning the feature rights to Boston Strong, Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge’s yet-to-be-published account of the bombing that so affected our long-ago ancestors of April.

Like the book, the film will focus on the city’s reaction in the immediate aftermath, and the Boston police’s ensuing manhunt for the perpetrators using the limited means of their early 2013 technology. No directors or Wahlbergs are currently attached—which isn’t surprising, given that the script isn’t likely to be completed until several months from now. By that point everything we know today—even, let’s say, things we experienced in a nightmarish loop on the news for weeks on end—will be naught but a distant memory, one that would require a dramatization of some kind for it to even seem real.