Benedict Cumberbatch is currently on set at the start of filming Marvel’s Doctor Strange, but he’s also looking towards the future and a different kind of magic, as he is attached to star in The War Magician, according to THR.
The film will see him take on another relatively unsung hero of World War II (after Alan Turing in The Imitation Game) who helped win the conflict in ways that didn’t involve conventional weapons, playing Jasper Maskelyne, who ‘put together a rag‐tag “dirty dozen” of accomplices dubbed “The Magic Gang” who used illusion tricks to hide strategic targets such as the Alexandria harbor, the Suez Canal, in the process concealing 150,000 men with 1,000 guns and tanks…
‘The illusions helped turn the tide of the war against General Rommel and the Germans in North Africa, leading up to the Battle of El Alamein. The announcement states that Maskelyne’s techniques were so effective that Adolf Hitler added him to his personal blacklist alongside men like Douglas MacArthur and British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery who, if captured alive, were to receive “special” treatment by the Nazis.’
Book Of Eli’s Garry Whitta is writing the screenplay, although the project hasn’t found a director as yet. It’s not clear when we might get to see the movie, although it appears to be some way off.
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