The Fifth Estate: Five Things to Know About the Julian Assange Thriller

Going to see the thriller? Here are a few facts before you go to the theater!

By Peter Paras Oct 20, 2013 6:57 PMTags
Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Domcheit-Berg, The Fifth EstateFrank Connor/DreamWorks

After Bill Hader's spot on impersonations on SNL, it was only a matter of time before the official movie hit theaters…

We kid!

Director Bill Condon (Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2) presents the story of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his partner in cyber schemes, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) both became underground watchdogs of some of the richest fat cats on the planet.

The key was in creating a way for whistle-blowers to leak precious intel without fear of being discovered. After a more than a few scandals, Assange broke a story that gave way to the biggest info dump of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history.  

Here's five things to know about the Julian Assange biopic:

Dreamworks

1. Wiki What?: No, Wikipedia is not also owned by Julian Assange. The "Wiki" term is just hip with Europeans. (Yeah, it's annoying, but go with it.) Turns out "wiki" is "any website that allows the creation and editing of interlinked webpages via a web browser." Or at least, that what we learned from Wikipedia.

2. Benedict Cumberbatch: From Sherlock to Julian to Smaug: After committing to the part of the 21st century's Holmes, Cumberbatch is just as scattered, brilliant and paranoid as Assange. (He also impressed as the just as brilliant Commander "John Harrison" in Star Trek Into Darkness.) A few years ago, most haven't heard of the British thespian, but with a ton of high profile gigs underway he's only getting bigger: like dragon size. This December's Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug unleashes Cumberbatch as the fire-breathing treasure-hording beastie.

Dreamworks

3. Coulda Been A Badly Named Movie. The script is by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who wrote the book it's based on Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website. The Fifth Estate (a much better title) refers to the media. Traditionally, the fourth has been the press, which IS the media, but the interwebs took the delivering of info to a whole other level so fifth it is.

4. The Man to Tag: Daniel Brühl. American audiences might not have remembered him from his small role in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, but with this year's Rush and now as Daniel, Brühl is becoming the go to guy for compelling yet charming Austrians. (Is that better than being the brilliant, paranoid British one?) In Fifth, he's the Andrew Garfield to Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Will a superhero franchise be in his future too?

5. Hack the Planet!: Hackers (1995) starred little known actress Angelina Jolie as a cyber teen "Acid Burn" who along with (then real life husband) Johnny Lee Miller's "Crash Override" took down the man long before the real Assange did. (And with rollerblades!) Fitting that the film is just as daffy as the 90s one was at portraying the world of computers. Really, Fifth, a dream like state where Julian and Daniel code away complete with heavy visual FX? That's soooo nineties….