Stone told Reuters that he initially did not want to pursue the project and was not seeking trouble. However, after meeting with Snowden in Russia, the 70-year-old director, known for films like "JFK", "Natural Born Killers" and "Wall Street", changed his mind. He was concerned that the film might be boring, but ultimately saw it as a dramatic thriller rather than a documentary. "Snowden", which will be released in theatres on Friday, follows Snowden's transformation from a conservative CIA agent to a disillusioned NSA operative who eventually exposed the government's mass surveillance programmes in 2013. He currently resides in Russia and is being sought by the US government for espionage. Amnesty International and two other organizations have recently started a campaign to seek a pardon for him. Stone and Snowden had multiple meetings in Russia where they both agreed that the film would be a dramatization. However, the film's progress was halted when Stone approached studios for funding, but the director did not disclose which studios were contacted. Stone stated that we currently live in a climate of self-censorship where individuals must either conform or risk being excluded. He believes that the NSA did not directly instruct anyone to avoid certain topics. Eventually, Open Road Films, a collaboration between Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment, co-financed the film "Snowden" for $40 million. The movie, which features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden and Shailene Woodley as his girlfriend Lindsay Mills, was primarily filmed in Europe, with Germany offering production subsidies and standing in for Maryland, Snowden's home state. Despite the challenges of creating an engaging story about computer coding and programmers without traditional action scenes, director Stone shot important scenes in Washington DC and Hawaii, and even had Gordon-Levitt and Woodley act out a date scene in front of the White House. The director jokingly suggested that if one is going to take a risk in the US, they should go all out.