Actress Rosamund Pike says she had to fight to get the role of Marie Colvin in "A Private War". Directed by Matthew Heineman, "A Private War" chronicles the life of Colvin and is based on Marie Brenner's 2012 Vanity Fair article "Marie Colvin's Private War". Colvin died in 2012 while covering the siege of Homs in Syria.

When Pike first heard the script through Amma Asante, she instantly fell in love with the story. When she discovered that Heineman was attached to direct it, she pushed for a meeting. "I knew that Matt was a very original story-teller from seeing his docs," Pike said in a statement to IANS.