Critical Assembly

The film is a television thriller originally titled "Ground Zero" and scheduled to be broadcast in the fall of 2001. It was based on the bestselling James Mills novel The Seventh Power. The story centers around two students who build a nuclear device to illustrate the need for a change in national priorities; the device ends up in the hands of a terrorist following betrayal by a fellow student. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, the film was shelved when its plot was considered inappropriate. "Ground Zero" was deemed too direct of a reference to the name by which the World Trade Center site would become known and the film re-emerged in 2003 under the title "Critical Assembly".