Matt Damon's Iraq War Thriller Starts Filming

Director Paul Greengrass has set Amy Ryan and Greg Kinnear to star alongside Matt Damon in the untitled Iraq war thriller that begins shooting today in Spain for Universal Pictures.

Pic is inspired by Rajiv Chandrasekaran's nonfiction book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone."

Greengrass (Bourne Ultimatum) and Brian Helgeland turned the premise into a fictional thriller set in the "Green Zone," a walled and fortified area where US troops stay during the Iraq occupation. There, critics say, flawed decisions are made because leaders are separated from the realities of life in war-torn Iraq.

Damon plays an officer who teams with a senior CIA officer to search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Ryan will play a New York Times foreign correspondent sent to Iraq to investigate the US government's WMD claims. Kinnear plays another CIA officer. Antoni Corone has been cast as a colonel.