He’s TV’s mystery-solver on “Sherlock,” an acclaimed stage thespian, an Oscar nominated actor, and soon to be Marvel‘s “Doctor Strange” — basically, Benedict Cumberbatch can’t be pinned down to any one thing, so the news that he’s gonna play the trigger man in a high concept thriller? Sure, why not.
Cumberbatch is set to produce and star in an adaptation of Geoffrey Household‘s novel “Rogue Male.” Michael Lesslie (Justin Kurzel‘s “Macbeth” and “Assassin’s Creed“) will write the story that follows a hunter who is tasked with assassinating a dictator, with the author himself saying that the target was supposed to be a stand-in for Adolf Hitler. Here’s the full book synopsis:
1930-something: a professional hunter is passing through an unnamed Central European country that is in the thrall of a vicious dictator. The hunter wonders whether he can penetrate undetected into the dictator’s private compound. He does. He has the potential target in his sites and is wondering whether to pull the trigger when security catches up with him. Imprisoned, tortured, doomed to a painful death, the hunter makes an extraordinary and harrowing escape, fleeing through enemy territory to the safety of his native England. But that safety is delusive: his pursuers will not be diverted from their revenge by national borders; the British government cannot protect him without seeming to endorse his deed. The hunter must flee society, and he goes literaly underground, like a fox to its earth. The hunter has become the hunted.
It sounds like compelling material, it certainly is, and has been adapted twice before: as Fritz Lang‘s 1941 film “Man Hunt,” and as a 1977 TV movie starring Peter O’Toole. So we’ll see how this project, set up at Fox Searchlight, but without a director just yet, looks to stand apart from the previous iterations. Until then, watch both of the previous versions below. [Variety]
