‘The Fifth Estate’ Behind the Scenes Featurette

The Fifth Estate stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, and Daniel Bruhl along with director Bill Condon discuss bringing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ story to the screen in The Fifth Estate. Condon stresses this isn’t a documentary but instead a thriller, while Linney reminds viewers this story isn’t over yet.

DreamWorks Pictures will open the R-rated thriller in theaters on October 18, 2013.

The Fifth Estate Starring Benedict Cumberbatch
A scene from ‘The Fifth Estate’ starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Photo © DreamWorks Pictures)

The 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?”

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.