Benedict Cumberbatch Will Be An Assassin in ROGUE MALE

According to THR, Benedict Cumberbatch has signed on to star in and produce a film adaptation of Geoffrey Household’s bestselling British novel Rogue Male, which “told of a hunter who attempts to assassinate a dictator but is caught, tortured and left for dead. When he escapes back home to England, he must hide out in a harsh countryside with the enemy agents as well as the police in hot pursuit.”

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 literally underground, like a fox to its earth. The hunter has become the hunted.