Benedict Cumberbatch isn't just busy making otter faces. The Doctor Strange star is slated to play the lead role in the fact-based World War 2 drama titled The War Magician.
The movie focuses on the story of Jasper Maskelyne, a British magician and illusionist by profession. He assembled a group called "The Magic Gang" to use magic tricks as a form of entertainment to help the allies confuse the Nazis.
Cumberbatch will star as the British hero himself - Maskelyne. The magician that helped the Allied Forces fight the Nazis.
Cumberbatch is no stranger to the old World Wars, he previously played a war hero in the WW2 film The Imitation Game. Cumberbatch played Alan Turing, a Cambridge math genius recruited by the British Intelligence Agency, MI6. He was commissioned to crack the Nazi codes being passed through the vine which contains messages of next attacks and targets.
Cumberbatch's production banner, SunnyMarch, is producing The War Magician along with Storyscape's Bob Cooper and Richard Saperstein and Tony Eldridge of Lonetree Entertainment. Funding comes from StudioCanal. The screenplay will be penned by Gary Whitta.
While Cumberbatch is still waiting in the wind for The War Magician to move to its proper development stage, he is currently busy in production and filming as Doctor Stephen Strange. A neurosurgeon in the Marvel universe, who, after a terrible car accident encounters magic and alternate reality. Filming has already begun for Marvel's Doctor Strange and that will keep Cumberbatch busy, going around Hong Kong, Nepal, New York and Kathmandu, until The War Magician will be put together.
The War Magician does not have a director in line and no date has been determined for release or filiming.
Doctor Strange, is scheduled to hit theaters next fall on November 4 and is being directed by Scott Derrickson, as posted online.
