What 2013 film stars Laura Linney and Benedict Cumberbatch?
Answer
The Fifth Estate
The 2013 film starring Laura Linney and Benedict Cumberbatch is The Fifth Estate.
Directed by Bill Condon, the biographical thriller dramatizes the rise of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, played by Cumberbatch. Linney appears as Sarah Shaw, a fictionalized senior U.S. State Department official. The cast also includes Daniel Brühl, Anthony Mackie, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci, and David Thewlis.
The screenplay was written by Josh Singer and drew partly on books by Daniel Domscheit-Berg and journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013 and received a theatrical release the following month. Its title refers to a perceived new media sphere operating outside traditional journalism.
A common mix-up is confusing The Fifth Estate with We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, a 2013 documentary about the same subject. The drama was praised more consistently for Cumberbatch’s performance than for its overall accuracy or storytelling.