'Zero Dark Thirty' Trailer: Kathryn Bigelow Hunts For Osama Bin Laden

A day after Aaron Sorkin presented his take on the death of Osama bin Laden in HBO's time-delayed drama The Newsroom, The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow is getting ready to present hers. Which, as you might expect, looks a bit more action-oriented than his did.

Starring Joel Edgerton, Jessica Chastain, Chris Pratt, Kyle Chandler, Mark Strong, Jason Clarke, and many more exciting names, Zero Dark Thirty follows the Navy SEAL Team 6 in their ultimately successful hunt for the al Qaeda leader. The very first teaser for the controversial drama has just dropped, and you can watch it after the jump.

[EW via First Showing]

Considering the fact that Zero Dark Thirty is based on true, well-publicized events, it's kind of surprising how little we actually know about this movie at this point, aside from the basic premise. Currently, it's not even clear which actors are playing which characters — or for that matter, who the characters are.

The new teaser doesn't give away too many details either, but what it offers is pretty promising. We get brief glimpses of Chandler and Ehle, among others, and a great sense of the movie's intense tone. Bigelow managed to craft an almost unbearably tense film out of one soldier's dangerous profession in The Hurt Locker, and won an Oscar for that accomplishment. Imagine what she'll be able to do with a massive, years-long manhunt with worldwide repercussions.

Zero Dark Thirty would've been a noteworthy release no matter what, but Bigelow's timing definitely adds to the buzz. Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were already working on a movie about the search for bin Laden when news broke that he'd been killed, forcing them to go back and work the real-life development into their script. Then there was some controversy over the movie's release date, as some political types argued that a fall date would influence the outcome of the presidential election. The picture was duly moved to December 19, where it should fit right in with the other Oscar hopefuls set to open that month.