Last year, the British actor with the great name, Benedict Cumberbatch, was in five high-profile movies: “August: Osage County” (alongside Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts), “Star Trek Into Darkness” (as you know who), “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” (as the voice of the dastardly dragon), and Best Picture Oscar winner “12 Years a Slave”. His only film that was both a critical and financial bust was the biopic “The Fifth Estate”, in which he starred as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Now, with a trio of new big films coming-out over the holidays, Cumberbatch could be a contender to earn a second consecutive LCJ Movie Award nomination for Actor of the Year.
In “The Imitation Game”, which opens in Limited Release on November 21st, Cumberbatch plays mathematician Alan Turing, whose defying actions have a major impact during WWII. The Weinstein Company drama just won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, officially putting it in the Awards Season derby. Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Mark Strong co-star.
We’ll also be hearing a lot from Cumberbatch, as he returns to voice Smaug (and play Necromancer) in “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, opening December 17th. But an even more buzzed-about voice-over performance will be as the secret agent wolf, Classified, leader of the North Wind crime-fighting organization, in DreamWorks Animation’s “Penguins of Madagascar”. The action comedy doesn’t open until November 26th, but this two-minute clip clearly showcases Cumberbatch’s comedic talents.