WikiLeaks Movie ‘The Fifth Estate’ Star Benedict Cumberbatch Thinks Julian Assange ‘Won’t Particularly Want To Support The Film’; Film Gets Mixed Reviews

The WikiLeaks movie "The Fifth Estate" premiered recently at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Benedict Cumberbatch who plays the title role said that it is unlikely that WikiLeaks' Julian Assange would support the film.

Cumberbatch said to reporters at the press conference, "I'm not a betting man, but I reckon he (Assange) won't particularly want to support the film."

He probably is right, considering what Assange had said during an interview with Daily Mail last July when asked what he thought about the (then upcoming) movie. The 42-year old WikiLeaks founder said, "We are WikiLeaks so we have a leaked copy of the script!  It's a hostile work and, although Benedict Cumberbatch is personally supportive, when he asked to come and meet me in the embassy I said no because I didn't want to legitimise the film."

The British actor did express his view of the movie. The Guardian quotes him as saying, "I think we show his ideas and integrity and self-sacrifice.  I think there's a lot to celebrate about his achievements."

Further, he said about portraying the role, "I think to try and go into this realm of thumbs up or thumbs down is so limiting. You want to find what's human about him. And that's not to soften the edges. [But] so it's something we can relate to."

But the movie is getting mixed reviews from critics.  Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote, "Both the kindest and most damning thing you can say about 'The Fifth Estate' is that it primarily hobbles itself by trying to cram in more context-needy material than any single drama should have to bear."

"The Fifth Estate" site gives its plot:

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 movie is scheduled to hit theatres on October 18.

Other than "The Fifth Estate," Cumberbatch also figures in two other films at the Toronto International Film Festival, namely: "12 Years A Slave" and "August: Osage County."  His films in 2013 include "Star Trek Into the Darkness," "Jerusalem," The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," and "LIttle Favour."  He will reprise his role as Necromancer in "The Hobbit: There and Back Again," to be shown in 2014.