Matthew Goode Joins Benedict Cumberbatch In Alan Turing Biopic

I’m sure many out there think Matthew Goode (Watchmen) and Benedict Cumberbatch would make a cute couple, but while it now appears they’ll star alongside one another in a biopic of gay codebreaker Alan Turing, Goode will be staying straight in The Imitation Game.

The Daily Mail has the news that Goode has signed on alongside Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. Turing is famed for helping the Allies defeat the Germans in World War II by breaking codes and building machines that were the forerunners of modern computers (which were based on his theories). However, in the 1950s he was prosecuted by the British government for being gay.

Turing made the extreme decision to undergo chemical castration instead of going to prison. In 1954 he died from cyanide poisoning, with many believing he killed himself by dosing an apple with the substance (although there are still some who believe it was accidental).

When Knightley signed on, it wasn’t known who she would play, but now it appears she’ll be Joan Clarke, a mathematician and cryptanalyst who worked alongside Turing, and offered to marry him, even though she knew full-well he was gay. He never took her up on the offer. Goode meanwhile will be another code-cracking, Hugh Alexander, who was also a chess master.

Graham Moore wrote the script for The Imitation Game, based on Andrew Hodges’s book. Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) will direct.

(Oh, and if you do need to see Goode going a little gay, watch Brideshead Revisited or A Single Man).