I’ll admit to being a bit of a fanboy for Benedict Cumberbatch. This great bit of “time travel” promotion on behalf of The Fifth Estate at Buzzfeed tapped into the fan’s desire to see Cumberbatch have a juicy role in the Doctor Who universe, even if it was an obvious ad.
Less exciting is the first poster for the movie, which was released this week too.
With a focus on Wikileaks, this is a movie that’s set smack in the middle of one of the most pressing debates of our time. How much control over what’s private and what’s not we’re willing to give up to our governments. I’m glad Disney is distributing the film for Dreamworks.
Here’s the synopsis:
Triggering our age of high-stakes secrecy, explosive news leaks and the trafficking of classified information, WikiLeaks forever changed the game. Now, in a dramatic thriller based on real events, “The Fifth Estate” reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society—and what are the costs of exposing them?”
Previously: Trailer for The Fifth Estate.