How real are Hollywood versions of recent news stories?

The margin between what is news and what becomes a Hollywood movie has narrowed immeasurably in recent years. What's news one day can be in development on a Burbank lot the next.

With the WikiLeaks movie 'The Fifth Estate' about to be released – complete with additional free publicity from Julian Assange himself – let's look at the news according the Hollywood, and how it might differ to the actual events...

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'Zero Dark Thirty'

As Kathryn Bigelow herself said of her movie 'Zero Dark Thirty', it's 'accurate in the way a movie can be accurate: it's 10 years compressed into two and a half hours and there are many, many tactics utilised'.

The man who actually shot Osama bin Laden that night in Abbottabad, known only as 'the shooter', had a few issues with the events as portrayed on screen. He told US journalist Phil Bronstein in Esquire that the tactics on screen 'sucked' and that 'the mission in the damn movie took way too long'. “When Osama went down, it was chaos, people screaming. No one called his name,” he added. “They Hollywooded it up some.”

'Pain & Gain'

It wasn't only Mark Kermode who was outraged by Michael Bay's kidnap crime spree caper 'Pain & Gain'. “It is a movie in which Michael Bay makes his little arthouse movie to show us his soul and we look into his soul and find ourselves looking into a void-like abyss of blackness - the depth and enormity of which is impossible to comprehend,” he said.

The families of the victims of the Sun Gym Gang, the story the film is based on, agreed entirely. Zsuzsanna Griga's brother and his girlfriend were murdered and dismembered by the gang. “It's horrible what happened to them,” she said. “I don't want the American public to be sympathetic to the killers.”

The real perpetrators Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal were sentenced to death for murder in 1998. Added retired Miami-Dade Police Sgt. Felix Jimenez: “You are talking about real people. And in this particular case, especially when you're talking about the murder victims, these were innocent victims.”

'The Bling Ring'

The Bling Ring, or Burglar Bunch, was a group of teenagers and young adults who burgled celebrities' houses through 2008 and 2009, often using social media to find out when they'd be out and track their movements. They hauled in nearly $3 million in cash, jewellery and belongings, targeting the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox and Orlando Bloom.

Sofia Coppola brought the story to the screen, starring Emma Watson, but the real Bling Ring remained unimpressed. Alexis Neiers, one of the ring – the one played by Watson using the name Nicki in the film – called the movie 'trashy', and the source material 'inaccurate'. “The truth will come out soon enough and I have no intention of seeing this film,” she added. ‘The Bling Ring’ got strong reviews, mind.

'Game Change'

HBO drama 'Game Change' took on the 2008 presidential campaign, specifically from the point of view of the Republicans, John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin. In a deft turn of impersonation, Julianne Moore played Palin to a tee, while Ed Harris was McCain, and Woody Harrelson Steve Schmidt, the campaign's senior strategist.

Every pundit had their two cents on the movie when it came out in 2012, but what about the people being depicted? Palin said that Jay 'Meet The Parents' Roach's film 'lapsed into a tired routine of manipulating facts and omitting key parts... in order to push a biased agenda and drive ratings'.

McCain, who was far more sympathetically played, added: “I don't understand, even in the tough world of politics, why there continues to be such an assault on a good and decent person. I admired and respect her. I'm proud of our campaign... I thought she was the most qualified person.” However, campaign aide Nicolle Wallace, who was played by Sarah Paulson in the film, said it was 'true enough to make me squirm'.

'The Social Network'

Essentially a film about some nerds and a court case which took place just a handful of years previous to the film's production, David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin managed to tell a compelling story about the founding of Facebook. But was it what actually happened? In part.

“The whole framing of the movie is I'm with this girl (who doesn't exist in real life) who dumps me, which has happened in real life, a lot,” Mark Zuckerberg told an audience at Stanford University. “And basically the framing is that the whole reason for making Facebook is because I wanted to get girls, or wanted to get into clubs. They [the film's creators] just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things. It's interesting the stuff that they focused on getting right – like every single shirt and fleece they had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own.”

'The Fifth Estate is in cinemas now'.