Cumberbatch ain’t done with magic.
The man soon to be known as DOCTOR STRANGE is attached to a script by BOOK OF ELI/ROGUE ONE writer Gary Whitta called THE WAR MAGICIAN. It revolves around Jasper Maskelyne, a real-life British magician who helped the Allies during WWII utilizing his vast expertise of misdirection and slight-of-hand. Eventually, Maskelyne had a group of fellow illusionists working alongside him in the field, and they were known as The Magic Gang.
I don’t know how I never heard this story before, but it sounds like dynamite material for a different sort of World War II flick. It’s not just these guys who think so; Tom Cruise was set to play Maskelyne in 2001, but, like a shitty magician, that never materialized.
Watching Maskelyne and his compatriots fuck with the Nazis with giant mirrors, inflatable soldiers/tanks, and specially-designed escape devices for POWs sounds like a hell of a time at the movies, and Cumberbatch, who nearly pulled down an Oscar for playing another WWII hero, Alan Turing, is already the perfect guy for the job. But after DOCTOR STRANGE? Forget about it.
Who should they get to direct this thing? Guillermo Del Toro? Michael Mann? Joe Johnston?
