Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage has joined the cast of director Oliver Stone's contentious Edward Snowden biopic and will portray the character of an former U.S. intelligence agent in the movie. The other cast members include Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who will play the title role of the whistle blower Edward Snowden; Shailene Woodley, who will portray Lindsay Mills, and Timothy Olyphant and Scott Eastwood as NSA agents.

According to Christian Today, the filming of the upcoming movie titled 'Snowden' has already begun. The filming began on Feb. 15 in Munich, Germany, and it will continue till May in various locations. The story of the film revolves around the feats of the U.S. intelligence analyst Edward Snowden in uncovering the government's dealings in collecting underground data and making it public. In addition, the biopic will focus on Snowden's plea for asylum in Russia.

For the uninitiated, Stone is known for selecting such contentious political and legal subjects for his films. Earlier, he directed the 1991 award-winning film 'JFK,' which aggravated difference of opinion - while the film received acclaims from some, there were others who questioned it. He also directed a couple of biopics - the first one of Richard Nixon (titled 'Nixon') and the other of George W. Bush (titled 'W').

Earlier, Cage worked with Stone in the 2006 film 'The World Trade Center' and working for 'Snowden' reunites them.

Two novels - Luke Harding's "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man" and the forthcoming novel "Time of the Octopus," penned by Snowden's Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena form the basis of the script of the biopic. While the first novel narrates how Snowden traveled from Hawaii to Hong Kong to meet journalist Glenn Greenwald and give him the NSA documents, the upcoming novel talks about Snowden's stay in Russia and his wait for political asylum in the Communist country.