Though you might think he’ll have had his fill of the mystical arts after starring in Doctor Strange, it appears Benedict Cumberbatch is happy to keep on with the magic act for a different role. He’s attached to star in The War Magician.
It’s the story of real-life magician and illusionist Jasper Maskelyne, who, along with a group of colleagues dubbed The Magic Gang, became an integral part of a unit focused on the action along the Suez Canal in World War II. He devised ingenious – and very large scale – illusion systems that virtually made tanks invisible from the air, hid whole buildings full of ammunition and supplies, and even made an entire city vanish and reappear several miles away.
Maskelyne joined the Royal Engineers at the start of the war, thinking that his skills could be used to create camouflage. He convinced skeptical officers by creating the illusion of a German warship on the Thames using only mirrors and a model. The military eventually deployed him to the North African theatre in the Western Desert, although he spent most of his time there entertaining the troops. But his work was enough that he ended up on Hitler’s personal blacklist.
This one has been in the works for a while, with Tom Cruise and Paramount buying the rights to David Fisher’s eponymous non-fiction book back in 2001. Since then, little has happened beyond Marc Forster flirting with directing the film and, as it stands now, it’s in the hands of StudioCanal with Book Of Eli writer and Rogue One contributor Gary Whitta on screenplay duty. No director is currently attached, and there’s a ways to go with the film, not least because it’ll have to wait for Cumberbatch to be finished with his Strange work.