When the first images emerged from the set of The Fifth Estate, we were worried — as much as we love Benedict Cumberbatch, would it be possible to take the man seriously with that hair?
Well, the film now has a trailer, and we have our answer — yes. Yes, we can take him seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it's easy to imagine Sherlock picking up serious Oscar buzz for this one. Cumberbatch appears to have nailed Assange's mannerisms, and more importantly, he's mastered the Aussie accent — something we can't recall any foreign actor outside Robert Downey Jr doing.
(See, cast and crew of Pacific Rim? It can be done.)
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There's still the small matter of Julian Assange denouncing the film as a "lie" (he got hold of the shooting script, because of course he did, and called it "a massive propoganda attack"). But what truly accurate biopic could be wholly embraced by its subject, especially one with an ego like Assange's?
Much more troubling is that the film's director, Bill Condon, helmed the last two Twilight movies. But if he can translate the journey of WikiLeaks to the screen as faithfully as he did the awfulness of the Twilight books, that shouldn't be a problem.
If all the stars align, The Fifth Estate — based on a book by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former colleague of Assange's — could be the Social Network of 2013, with Domscheit-Berg (played by Daniel Brühl) essentially standing in for Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as the friend who eventually shouts some variation of "look what you've become!" at the protagonist.
