OLIVER STONE’S forthcoming blockbuster about the World Trade Centre attacks has begun shooting on the streets of New York, after the controversial director spent months reassuring victims’ families that it would not be a Towering Inferno/Titanic disaster film.

Relatives of those killed were concerned when they heard that Stone, known for conspiracy theory films such as JFK, planned to turn his lens on the attacks of September 11, 2001, which he had called a revolt against multinational corporations.

But the Oscar-winning director of Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon met the families, hired a liaison officer and even allowed some to read the secret script.

“I am confident this is going to be done right. It’s going to be non-exploitative,” Charles Wolf, who lost his British wife, Katherine, on the 97th floor of the northern tower, said. “What matters is that we do not revise history. I am very concerned about history and I believe that is not going to be the case.”

BACKGROUND

• World Trade Center

• World Trade Center - Sunday Times review

• Ground Zero, the film set

• Relatives back Stone's 9/11 plot

• Coming soon: 9/11, The Movie

BACKGROUND

• United 93

Oliver Stone on World Trade Center

What was it like to be carried alive from the ruins on September 11?

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

Stone’s still-untitled project is one of two Hollywood films about the September 11 attacks due to be released next year.

The other is Flight 93, by the British director Paul Greengrass.

Stone’s film tells the story of the two port authority police officers — John McLoughlin, played by Nicholas Cage, and William Jimeno, played by Michael Pena — who were buried in the collapse and dug out the next day. The film also follows David Karnes, a Connecticut accountant and US Marine reservist, who rushed to the scene when he saw the towers fall and crawled into the rubble to rescue the two men.

In July Stone called the film “a work of collective passion, a serious meditation on what happened, that carries within a compassion that heals”. With emotions still raw after the attack, the producers decided to limit filming in New York and to stay away from the 16-acre World Trade Centre site.

Producers have no plans to film people fleeing through Lower Manhattan, or to coat the streets in ash and debris. Nor do they intend to recreate the twin towers falling, although some scenes will show people watching the news.

The first days on location were at the port authority bus terminal on 42nd Street. Most of the action will be filmed on stage in Los Angeles. “I understand that they are not going to show the burning buildings and people jumping, which I think is proper,” William Doyle, who lost his son, Joseph, said.

Mr Wolf, a part-time actor who runs a direct-marketing firm, has won a role as an extra, playing a businessman in the port authority bus terminal.

ATTACK MOVIES

11’09”01 - September 11 Eleven films each 11 minutes and 9 seconds long. Released in 2002

Flight 93 About the hijacked plane brought down in Pennsylvania. Directed by Paul Greengrass. In production

102 Minutes Adaptation of a book by the journalists Kevin Flynn and Jim Dwyer. Release to be announced

Red Mercury British film about al-Qaeda cell. Release to be announced

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