Even though no one’s seen The Fifth Estate yet (it debuts at TIFF in a few weeks), there are already fans of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange are already denouncing it, largely because it’s based on a book by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former right-hand man to Assange who later turned against the man and his methods.
Now a poster and some new images from the film have arrived, which you can see above and below.
Heres the 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 centurys 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 worlds 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 societyand what are the costs of exposing them?
The Fifth Estate is presented by DreamWorks Pictures and Reliance Entertainment in association with Participant Media and is produced by Steve Golin and Michael Sugar, with Bill Condon directing. The screenplay is by Josh Singer, based on the book “Inside WikiLeaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg and the Guardian book “WikiLeaks by David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film will be released in U.S. theaters on October 18, 2013.’
