Director David Yates has been in the news a lot these past few days with all the buzz about the potential big-screen Doctor Who movie. Assuming a Who movie comes together at all, that's years down the road, so what might be closer on Yates' horizon? Deadline says Warner Bros. is trying to talk him into directing Imitation Game, which tells the tragic story of WWII hero and math genius Alan Turing.
Warner Bros. paid new writer Graham Moore a hefty seven figures for the Imitation Game spec script last month. According to an earlier story on Deadline, there was a bit of a bidding was for the script because Leonardo DiCaprio was pursuing the lead role. That same story reported that Ron Howard was interested in directing, but so far neither of them are officially attached. Given this news about Warners wanting Yates for the director's chair, presumably Howard is out of the running.
Moore's script is based at least in part on Andrew Hodges' Turing biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma. Producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky had picked up the rights to the book and spent over a year working with Moore to perfect the script. It's no wonder, because there's plenty of fascinating material to explore in Turing's story. He was a pivotal figure in math, computer science, and artificial intelligence, having created the so-called "Turing test," which tests machine intelligence. During World War II he was a cryptanalyst in Britain and was crucial in cracking the infamous German Enigma code. His tragic death is the stuff Oscar bait is made of: after being prosecuted for his homosexuality in 1952, he accepted chemical castration rather than be sent to prison, then killed himself a few years later by eating a cyanide-laced apple.
