Julian Assange, the famed head of the website WikiLeaks, is not happy with the upcoming DreamWorks film based on his famous document-leaking website. As far as Assange is concerned, the film is just “massive propaganda.”
Via videolink, Assange recently told a gathering of the Oxford Union debate that the movie, titled The Fifth Estate and directed by Bill Condon, is nothing but a “massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff.”
Assange was speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, since Ecuador offered him asylum from countries seeking to prosecute him for his release of many thousands of pages of secret government documents.
The Internet activist told his audience that he had an advanced copy of the shooting script for the film and said it begins with Iranian officials working on building a nuclear bomb. The WikiLeaks founder said that the reason for such an opening was to “fan the flames of war” and that Iran’s nuclear bomb has nothing to do with him and his website. “It is a lie upon lie,” he said.
Recently, the film’s director released a statement talking up the ambiguities of the plot. “It may be decades before we understand the full impact of WikiLeaks and how it’s revolutionized the spread of information,” Condon said. “So this film won’t claim any long-view authority on its subject, or attempt any final judgment. We want to explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked.”
The film is to star Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange and Daniel Bruhl as Assange coworker Daniel Domscheit-Berg. It is set for a November release.
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