HBO has commissioned a documentary tracking the paralell lives of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl and the jihadist convicted of killing him, Omar Sheikh.
Titled The Journalist And The Jihadi: The Murder Of Daniel Pearl, the film will note that both men grew up with privileged backgrounds but had starkly different views of the world.
Pearl spent much of his career reporting from the Islamic world in part to promote cross-cultural understanding; Sheikh, by contrast, became a militant on a violent, and it turned out intersecting, path.
Narrated by CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour, the film is directed and produced by Ahmed A. Jamal and Ramesh Sharma.
HBO co-produced the doc with Moving Picture, First Take Ltd., and Distant Horizon.
