Plan B Forum

The Fifth Estate is a 2013 dramatic thriller film about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks starring Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange, and Daniel Brühl as its former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg.[5] It is directed by Bill Condon with a screenplay by Josh Singer based in-part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website, as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

The Fifth Estate is co-produced by DreamWorks and Participant Media and opened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.[6][7][8] The film will be released theatrically in the United States on October 18, 2013[2] through Disney's Touchstone Pictures distribution label, and in international territories by Mister Smith Entertainment.

Just from the promos I've seen it's clear that the intent of this film is to try to portray this self-important narcissistic slime ball as some sort of "hero"

The tale based on the WikiLeaks founder, once considered a potential Oscar contender, posts one of year’s worst openings

“The Fifth Estate,” which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the online secret-stealer, bombed in its debut this weekend, taking in $1.7 million from 1,769 theaters nationwide in one of the year’s biggest box-office belly flops.

That’s quite a comedown for a movie that was at one point considered an Oscar contender.

“We’re disappointed,” Disney’s head of distribution Dave Hollis said Sunday. “The talent and the whole team worked very hard on this, so it’s a major letdown.”

“The Fifth Estate” was in the awards discussion prior to its debut at the Toronto Film Festival last month. But a lukewarm reception from critics and audiences there killed momentum. Its positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 39 percent.

The filmmakers and Disney had hoped the ripped-from-the-headline tale about the group that publishes classified information and news leaks from anonymous sources would capture the spirit of the digital times as “The Social Network” did. That David Fincher-directed story of the how Facebook began brought in $225 million globally and earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination for Sony in 2010.

“I don’t think there’s near the interest In WikiLeaks that there is in Facebook,” said Exhibitor Relations vice-president and senior analyst Jeff Bock told TheWrap. “Think about the title – how many people even know what that means?”

(For the record, it’s a reference to journalists, media outlets that operate outside of or in opposition to the mainstream media.)

The audience that did show up was 54 percent male and 90 percent over the age of 25. The latter number is troubling, as it indicates that more young people, typically more digitally savvy, weren’t interested. Disney said what business it did manage came from the big cities; the film didn’t begin to connect with Heartland and small-town audiences.

The film, which was directed Bill Condon and co-stars Daniel Bruhl and Anthony Mackie, was produced by DreamWorks and Participant Media for about $26 million. Even with that the relatively low budget, the film is going to be a loser.

Disney can hope that the film will play better abroad, where Assange is a more high-profile figure, but the early returns weren’t encouraging there. It opened in the U.K. and Spain and brought in $1.6 million – less than it made here.