Bin Laden, Lincoln films work around U.S. election

Kathryn Bigelow's film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden now has a name - Zero Dark Thirty - and a first trailer. But its release, originally scheduled for October, has been put back until December 2012, a date after the U.S. presidential election.

The film has already drawn Republican critics, who say Bigelow, the director who won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, was granted access to sensitive security information to make the film. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King criticized the Obama administration for an "extremely close, unprecedented and potentially dangerous collaboration" with the filmmakers.

Bigelow's film follows the entire 10-year hunt for Bin Laden, and it was almost wrapped before a special team actually did capture him. She had to reshoot the last part of her movie, and she did meet with Pentagon officials to get information for the storyline, though the White House says the Defense Department regularly meets with filmmakers to give background information.

But what Republicans are most worried about is having Americans reminded, right before a presidential race, that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was captured while Barack Obama was in charge.

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. The method actor was called Mr. President on the set. (DreamWorks)

It's not the only movie stalled by the presidential election. Steven Spielberg announced in September he would time release of Lincoln, his biopic focusing on the last four months of the former president's life and his battle to abolish slavery, to avoid the election. "The movie will be purposely coming out AFTER next year's election. I didn't want it to become political fodder," he said.

Lincoln was a Republican, but he forged alliances across the political spectrum in an attempt to move the country beyond the Civil War. No peeks yet at Spielberg's footage, but a photo of Daniel Day-Lewis in the role of Lincoln is already generating Oscar buzz. The method actor who won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood was called Mr. President on the set.