The Fifth Estate Information

The Fifth Estate is an upcoming film about the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks starring Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange with Daniel Brühl as the former spokesperson of the website Daniel Domscheit-Berg. It is directed by Bill Condon with a screenplay by Josh Singer based in part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website, as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film is co-produced by DreamWorks and Participant Media and will be released on November 15, 2013 by DreamWorks through Disney's Touchstone distribution label and Mister Smith Entertainment worldwide.

Plot

Through the eyes of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), an early supporter and eventual colleague of Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the film follows the heady, early days of WikiLeaks to its abrupt end after a series of controversial and history changing info leaks. The website's overnight success brought instant fame to its principal architects, but as their power expanded across the globe, Daniel grew increasingly disillusioned with Julian's questionable tactics and ethics. The rift between the two friends became irreparable and their ideological differences tore them apart, but not before they revolutionized, for better and worse, the flow of information to news media and the world at large.

Cast

• Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange
• Daniel Brühl as Daniel Domscheit-Berg
• Laura Linney as Sarah Shaw
• Anthony Mackie as Sam Coulson
• David Thewlis as Nick Davies
• Peter Capaldi as Alan Rusbridger
• Dan Stevens as Ian Katz
• Alicia Vikander as Anke
• Carice van Houten as Birgitta Jónsdóttir

Production

It was reported on March 2011 that Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks Studios has acquired the rights of Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website, as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. Spielberg was quick to clarify that he is not involved in any way in the adaptation even though his Dreamworks company will produce the film. On July 2012, reports surfaced that Jeremy Renner is very keen on playing Julian Assange and Bill Condon is in negotiations to direct. It was also announced that Josh Singer penned the screenplay. Later that year, Deadline Hollywood broke the news that Jeremy Renner is out in the running and the studio is looking hard at Benedict Cumberbatch to play Assange instead. Joel Kinnaman was also attached at some point but reports were proved to be premature. The confirmation of Cumberbatch as the lead and Condon as the director also brought the news that James McAvoy is in talks to play Daniel Domscheit-Berg. McAvoy later dropped out because of scheduling conflicts and Daniel Brühl was eventually cast. The film was reported to have an early 2013 shooting date with Michael Sugar and Steve Golin of Anonymous Content serving as producers. During the Sundance Film Festival, a press release surfaced that the film will be co-produced by Participant Media that also collaborated with Dreamworks' Oscar-nominated films The Help and Lincoln and will be released on November 15, 2013. An official photo of Cumberbatch and Bruhl as Assange and Domscheit-berg at Reykjavik surfaced the same day.

Bill Condon stated that "It may be decades before we understand the full impact of WikiLeaks and how it's revolutionized the spread of information. So this film won't claim any long view authority on its subject, or attempt any final judgment. We want to explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked."

It was first reported on December 2012 that the film's title will be The Man Who Sold the World but with the official press release, it was confirmed that the title of the film is actually The Fifth Estate. Though unconfirmed by the studio, it is thought that the title of the film pertains to the alternative media which consists of online journalists and bloggers that do not classify as the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), the commoners (Third Estate), and the mainstream press (Fourth Estate).

On January 24, 2013 Julian Assange claimed, during a presentation of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence at Oxford University, that he had read the screenplay of the film, describing it as a" serious propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the integrity of its staff, and as a 'lie built upon a lie' "; and as "fanning the flames for war on Iran": the opening scene was inside a putative military complex in Iran and nuclear symbols could be seen (suggesting that the country was building a nuclear weapon, contrary to the findings of US intelligence reports). Birgitta Jonsdottir told the WikiLeaks official Twitter account that "the Iran scene has been written out, plus the name has been changed. Come with constructive ideas how to improve it". Jonsdottir also tweeted that Assange does not possess the latest version of the script.