Submission + - Wikileaks Film "The Fifth Estate": Julian Assange Letter To Benedict Cumberbatch (theguardian.com)
dryriver writes: In a letter published by The Guardian, Julian Assange asked British actor Benedict Cumberbatch (of Sherlock Holmes/Star Trek Into Darkness fame) NOT to play him in the upcoming Dreamworks-produced Wikileaks biopic "The Fifth Estate". Assange made his case as follows: "I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film. I do not believe it is going to be positive for me or the people I care about. I believe that it is going to be overwhelmingly negative for me and the people I care about. It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation. In other circumstances this vendetta may have gone away, but our conflict with the United States government and the establishment press has created a patronage and commissioning market – powerful, if unpopular – for works and comments that are harmful to us. There are dozens of positive books about WikiLeaks, but Dreamworks decided to base its script only on the most toxic. So toxic is the first book selected by Dreamworks, that it is distributed to US military bases as a mechanism to discourage military personnel from communicating with us. Its author is publicly known to be involved in the Dreamworks production in an ongoing capacity. Dreamworks' second rights purchase is the next most toxic, biased book. Published and written by people we have had a bitter contractual dispute with for years, whose hostility is well known. Neither of these two books were the first to be published and there are many independent authors who have written positive or neutral books, all of whom Dreamworks ignored."