Clearly not content with being the Sorcerer Supreme in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Benedict Cumberbatch has been attached since 2015 to a story of magic and mayhem that's based in our world called The War Magician. And that project is now moving forward, with Colin Trevorrow agreeing to direct the movie.
Nicholas Mariani is the current writer on board to adapt David Fisher's book. It chronicles the story of real-life magician and illusionist Jasper Maskelyne, who, along with a group of colleagues dubbed The Magic Gang, became an integral part of a unit focused on the action along the Suez Canal in World War II. He devised ingenious – and very large scale – illusion systems that virtually made tanks invisible from the air, hid whole buildings full of ammunition and supplies, and even made an entire city vanish and reappear several miles away.
Maskelyne joined the Royal Engineers at the start of the war, thinking that his skills could be used to create camouflage. He convinced skeptical officers by creating the illusion of a German warship on the Thames using only mirrors and a model. The military eventually deployed him to the North African theatre in the Western Desert, although he spent most of his time there entertaining the troops. But his work was enough that he ended up on Hitler’s personal blacklist.
The film has been in the works for 20 years now, with Tom Cruise first showing interest and nabbing the rights to the book. Since then, it has passed through several hands including director Marc Forster, but now Trevorrow is making it his follow-up to Jurassic World: Dominion.