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Though Jeremy Renner was previously rumored to be playing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a forthcoming biopic, talks seem to have shifted, and the star of "Sherlock" might be the benefactor.
Deadline is reporting that Benedict Cumberbatch is now in discussions to take the lead role of Assange in the biopic, with a script by Josh Singer based on the books WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War On Secrecy, by David Leigh and Luke Harding, and Inside WikiLeaks: My Time With Julian Assange At The World’s Most Dangerous Website by Daniel Domscheit-Berg. "The Killing" star and future RoboCop Joel Kinnaman is eyeing the role of Domscheit-Berg, Assange's right-hand man during the height of the Wikileaks controversy.
Renner certainly has a more physical resemblence to the real-life Assange, and those sorts of details tend to matter just as much to fans of biopics as they do to comic book geeks who freak out when the costumes of their favorite characters are redesigned in a movie adaptation. It's unquestionable that Cumberbatch is a talented actor, so I'm sure he'd be able to pull it off, and Kinnaman was great in Snabba Cash, but since nothing is confirmed at this point, we'll have to wait and see how this all shakes out.
