The film tells of a journalist's (Russell Crowe) probe into the suspicious death of the assistant and mistress of a Congressman (Ben Affleck).

The supporting cast includes Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright, and Jeff Daniels.

Released in North America on April 17, 2009, by Universal Pictures, the film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $88 million worldwide.

Baker was chief researcher for Congressman Stephen Collins, as the chair of the Congressional committee investigating private defense contractors, including of note, PointCorp.

A homeless girl named Mandi seeks out McAffrey to sell him items from a bag stolen by Stagg; they had been close friends.

These items include covert photographs of Baker meeting a well-dressed man and a gun with handmade hollow point bullets.

While McAffrey meets up with Collins's wife, Anne — with whom he had previously had an affair — he sends Frye to the hospital, where the witness is coming out of his coma.

Collins confirms to McAffrey that PointCorp is secretly the power behind other contractors, thus seeking a virtual monopoly on foreign and domestic government defense and security contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Baker's flatmate, Rhonda Silver, identifies the well-dressed man as Dominic Foy, a PR executive at a subsidiary of PointCorp.

He confronts Collins, who confirms that Bingham is an unstable veteran whose life he had saved in the Kuwait War of 1991 and whom he asked to follow Baker, once he became suspicious of her.

[4] Abbott was initially reluctant to sell the film rights to State of Play, fearing a compressed version of his miniseries would be unworkable, but in May 2004 he accepted a seven-figure Paramount Pictures-backed bid led by producer Scott Rudin.

[6] Director Kevin Macdonald had long been attached to the project; however, an early report suggested screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan was set to make the film his directorial debut.

He said the blend of fiction and the topical subjects of journalism and politics attracted him to the project, adding that he wanted to examine how American and European societies learn what is happening in the world and to what degree newspapers and the nightly news could be trusted.

He said that in an age when people read fewer newspapers, he wanted to explore the necessity for reliable information and the threat to the journalistic profession from collusion between reporters and politicians,[8] and that the film would "[ask] questions of how independent the press is, how much real investigating is conducted, and how much is taken on faith from lobbyists or PR sheets.

[8] According to Carnahan, the story's core issue (and the main factor behind his desire to write the adaptation) was the question it raised about whether a person would be justified in doing "a pretty awful thing" if performing great deeds in other areas of their life.

When he chose to concentrate his time on his family, the task was handed to screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who performed a small rewrite based upon Carnahan's notes.

[22] He visited the newsroom of The Washington Post with Macdonald in September 2007 to research the role, spending four hours "talking shop" with political and investigative reporters.

[26] Pitt preferred a version closer to the original Carnahan draft and wanted to postpone filming until after the resolution of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which would have enabled a further rewrite.

The studio preferred to press on with production; initially, it said it intended to sue Pitt for reneging on his "pay or play" deal,[16] which would have earned him $20 million.

Crowe had to negotiate with the studio over shooting dates to avoid a conflict with Nottingham (later renamed Robin Hood), which he was due to star in for director Ridley Scott in March 2008.

[32] Universal president of production Donna Langley said Crowe's performance was a naturalistic one, and claimed State of Play was a different film than the one that would have been made had Pitt remained.

The Stage television writer Liz Thomas said that while it was frustrating for British actors, such casting made good commercial sense, expressing hope that the film's high profile would be a "huge advert" or "shop window" for other such projects to come out of the UK in recent years.

[41] In an April 2009 interview to promote the film, Affleck said he drew on the experiences of Gary Condit, Eliot Spitzer, and John Edwards while preparing for the role.

[49] Scenes set on Mount Pleasant Street were also filmed at the Los Angeles studio, where a full replica of the strip's facade was built.

Producer E. Bennett Walsh said that the production chose not to shoot on the less restrictive Baltimore subway, which has substituted for Washington, D.C., in other films that have come up against the Metro's rules.

[55] Filming took place on the steps of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry temple in Washington, D.C.. Maryland's Montgomery Blair High School provided a marching band for the background.

[62][63] Macdonald aimed to recreate a famous 1970s Canadian photograph, which depicts rifle-twirling majorettes, to emphasize militaristic themes and to comment upon the place of guns in American society.

Macdonald involved moon early on in production, and in an unusual move for a studio film, he had Heffes write some of the music to State of Play in advance of principal photography, based purely upon the script.

The site's critical consensus reads: "A taut, well-acted political thriller, State of Play overcomes some unsubtle plot twists with an intelligent script and swift direction.

[73] Philip Kemp from Total Film called it "a twisty substantial thriller" and said, "It's not as exceptional as its source but the changes implemented mostly enhance rather than harm the story.