The Osterman Weekend is a 1983 American suspense thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah, based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Robert Ludlum.

The film stars Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Burt Lancaster, Dennis Hopper, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, Chris Sarandon and Craig T. Nelson.

CIA director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) watches a recording of agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) and his wife having sex.

Fassett points to three men as the top Omega agents: television producer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper) and stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon).

Rather than arrest the three members, which would alarm the KGB, Fassett proposes to the CIA director that they turn one of them to the side of the West in order to unravel the entire network more efficiently.

Fassett sees an opportunity in John Tanner (Rutger Hauer), a controversial television journalist who is highly critical of government abuses of power.

In three different video clips, the Russian man discusses with Cardone the prospect of "targeting" Tanner, seeing him as a threat; Tremayne expresses his desire to leave the country when "it" goes down; Osterman talks about wanting to see "radical change" in the current system, but makes clear that he's only interested if paid handsomely, asking for a Swiss bank account.

Tanner's troubled marriage is not improved when he asks his wife, Ali (Meg Foster), to take their son out of town for the weekend so the two of them would miss the reunion.

On the second night, Fassett sends a video feed to Tanner's dining room television, showing a clip about Switzerland that focuses on Swiss bank accounts and illegal financial manipulation.

Osterman dismisses the accusation and explains that they have been illegally sheltering money in Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxation, but insists they are not traitors.

It is revealed that Tanner himself has pre-recorded his questions for both men with Osterman's assistance, and has used the video feed to locate Fassett, whom he shoots and kills.

The angle from which Fassett's death is captured protects Tanner's anonymity, thereby appearing to confirm Danforth's threats in real time.

[3] As related in the documentary Alpha to Omega: Exposing The Osterman Weekend, producers Peter S. Davis and William N. Panzer were celebrating the wrapping of a film when they ran into Larry Jones.

Davis and Panzer immediately offered to purchase the rights, as they felt this could be the project that elevated them out of the B-movie features that they had been financing up to that point.

With the screenplay completed they went looking for a director, and an offhand comment led them to Sam Peckinpah, the controversial and troubled man who had helmed The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971).

Suffering from a damaged reputation due to alcohol and drug addiction (noted most recently on the set of his 1978 film Convoy), Peckinpah had been given the opportunity to do second unit work on Don Siegel's Jinxed!

In Marshall Fine's book Bloody Sam, screenwriter Sharp said that he himself did not like the screenplay he had written, and that he found it incredible that Davis and Panzer used his draft as the shooting script.

Many of those who signed on, including John Hurt, Burt Lancaster and Dennis Hopper, did so for less than their usual salaries for an opportunity to work with Peckinpah.

Panzer and Davis were hoping that Peckinpah would re-edit the film himself because they did not desire to antagonize him any further, but the director refused to make changes.

I sat before the screen, quiet, attentive and alert, and gradually a certain anger began to stir inside me, because the movie was not holding up its side of the bargain.

'"[11] The Chicago Reader's Dave Kehr has stated, "The structure is a mess...which ultimately makes it too difficult to tell whether its oddly compelling qualities are the result of a coherent artistic strategy or the cynical carelessness of a director sidelined."

Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote that it was "incomprehensible" and "full of gratuitous sex and violence", but "has a kind of hallucinatory craziness to it".

Disc 2 includes a 1080p high-definition, unrestored 2K scan of the director's cut sourced from Sam Peckinpah's personal 35mm negative.

[14][15] In September 2010, it was reported that Jesse Wigutow was providing re-writes for the film with Kinberg having since stepped back into a producer's role and Robert Schwentke now slated to direct.