WikiLeaks has posted what it claims is a “mature” version of the screenplay for Julian Assange film The Fifth Estate, accompanied by a memo which labels the film “irresponsible, counterproductive and harmful”, The Guardian informs.
The site describes Bill Condon’s drama, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange, as “a work of fiction masquerading as fact”, adding: “Most of the events depicted never happened, or the people shown were not involved in them.”
WikiLeaks’ 4,000-word missive also determines to pick apart what it claims is the film’s central argument: that the site’s release of classified US State Department documents in 2010 exposed and potentially endangered more than 2,000 informants worldwide. The role of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, which the film suggests was once Assange’s right-hand man, is downplayed, and the memo seeks to lampoon suggestions that the site’s founder dyes his hair white.
After posting the leaked script, WikiLeaks tweeted: “As WikiLeaks was never consulted about the Dreamworks/Disney film on us, we’ve given our advice for free: It’s bad.”
The Fifth Estate, which debuted at the Toronto film festival earlier this month, is partly based on Domscheit-Berg’s own book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, as well as Guardian writers David Leigh and Luke Harding’s WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. Condon has said his film hopes to “explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked.”
