The Hurt Locker ceremony, it won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Bigelow (the first woman to win this award), and Best Original Screenplay for Boal. "The Hurt Locker" is based on accounts of Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an American bomb squad in the war in Iraq for two weeks in 2004. The director Kathryn Bigelow was familiar with Boal's work before his experiences, having adapted one of his "Playboy" articles as the short-lived television series "The Inside" in 2002. When Boal was embedded with the squad, he accompanied its members 10 to 15 times a
The Hurt Locker Festival before it was released in the United States on June 26, 2009 by Summit Entertainment. The film earned near universal acclaim from critics, who praised Bigelow's directing, the cast, writing, and action sequences. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, making it the first Best Picture winner by a female director; Bigelow also became the first female director to win Best Director. The film grossed $49.2 million worldwide, making it one of the lowest grossing films to win Best Picture. In 2004, Sergeant First Class William James arrives