The Fifth Estate: First trailer released showing Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange

Enough of the villainous role in Star Trek for Benedict Cumberbatch. Now it’s time for him to enact something more challenging in a newer way. That’s why he takes on as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. The first trailer of the Bill Condon-directed film has been released.

The trailer gives us the feeling that it a hardcoreconspiracythriller, which also stars Daniel Bruhl as former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The rift between Assange and his right-hand

man is also evident in the new trailer of the film. The trailer starts with the now famous video of U.S. military when they gunned down a group of people in Baghdad in 2007. It also depicts the efforts by Wikileaks to divulge all the noble initiatives by the government. The intrinsic danger in the leaking of government information also comes into limelight in the trailer. Condon says on the Assange character in the film, “The movie presents him neither as hero or villain. We just try to present who he is and let you make up your mind,” adding that “I think, in fact, he’s neither.” He also said no pressure was ever created on him by the government on the film, nor they ever interfered.

“If you look at movies where that might have happened, they are movies that need something from the government, and that isn’t anything we did,” Condon said. He added that, “We had a few sources that worked in the State Department, but we weren’t asking for any special access, so there was no reason to engage them.” When his film is almost ready to roll out on October 11, a similar kind of story is going on around the world about Edward Snowden and it has been quite awkward for the filmmaker. Thus Condon said, “It was so strange, I have to say, when you’re making a movie, and editing it, and you’re seeing the story play out again, with some of the same lines being used by the government.” He also added, “Some of the exact same arguments are being applied to a completely different case. It’s quite eerie, actually.” But he never gave a second thought to his storyline, "It didn’t change anything, but it confirmed just how complicated the story was.” Rather The Fifth Estate’s significance has been reinstated by the emergence of Snowden.