The source of the story/rumor about Paul Greengrass being attached to direct The Trial of the Chicago 7 movie instead of Steven Spielberg is a two-day old posting (8.9) by Film School Rejects guy Neil Miller. He based his info listing about the project in Production Weekly.
I wrote some Dreamamount folks to see if the Greengrass story is true, but they haven’t responded. If it turns out to be so, great. Greengrass understands anger and radical politics in a way that Spielberg never could and never will. On top of which Greengrass is in his full-powers mode right now, and Spielberg’s best days are obviously behind him. (The first death knell was Always, the second was Amistad, and the third was when he decided to let Tom Cruise‘s teenaged kid live after diving into that alien battle in War of the Worlds.) Which is why Spielberg needs to be gently dissuaded from directing anything of a complex, adult or political nature ever again.
Which is why (not to beat a dead horse) he also needs to bail on the Abraham Lincoln project that he’s been avoiding for the last three or four years. I haven’t read Tony Kushner‘s screenplay, but the subject matter itself is way beyond Spielberg’s comfort zone (adolescent kid stuff, thrillers, aliens, Nazis.) If he directs it he’ll screw it up one way or the other — trust me. He has no natural gut investment in Lincoln, like he did when he made Schindler’s List. He really has become that 60ish bearded suburban guy poking around a high-end hardware store looking to buy weed killer.