Directed by Bill Condon (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2), The Fifth Estate sees Cumberbatch joined in the cast by Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds), Anthony Mackie (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), David Thewlis (Red 2), Alicia Vikander (Anna Karenina), Peter Capaldi (The Thick of It), Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones), Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey), Stanley Tucci (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) and Laura Linney (Hyde Park on Hudson). Check out the first trailer after the official 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?
The Fifth Estate opens in North America on October 11th ahead of a UK release on January 1st, 2014.