The Fifth Estate, which is about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, has gotten fair to middling advance reviews so far, but that hasn’t stopped Assange from publically trashing the film, and calling out its star, Benedict Cumberbatch.
Now as the Daily Beast tells us, Cumberbatch has responded to Assange, via Reddit AMA. After all, who’s got time to set up a lunch these days, but Assange also said in his open letter, “By meeting with you, I would validate this wretched film…” Cumberatch responded, “To have the man you are about to portray ask you intelligently and politely not to do it gave me real cause for concern. However, it galvanized me into addressing why I was doing this movie.”
Cumberbatch continued, “He accuses me of being a ‘hired gun’ as if I am an easily bought cypher for right wing propaganda. Not only do I NOT operate in a moral vacuum but this was not a pay day for mea t all. I’ve worked far less hard for more financial reward. This project was important to me because of the integrity I wanted to bring to provocative, difficult, but ultimately timely, and truly important figure of our modern times.”
Well said. Cumberbatch added that this story “resonated deeply with my beliefs in civil liberty, a healthy democracy, and the human rights of both communities and individuals to question those in authority.”
Whatever controversies will come with The Fifth Estate, it looks like Assange will do a lot to fan the flames himself. Whether he realizes it or not, Assange will make people even more interested in seeing the movie than if he’d just said nothing about it all, but as we all know he’s had a lot of trouble keeping things to himself.
