Imitation Game writer: Everyone told me a film about Alan Turing was a terrible idea
The writer of Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game has revealed he was repeatedly advised not to make the film.
Gay World War II codebreaker Alan Turing – often hailed as the grandfather of modern computing – was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952 after having sex with a man, and was chemically castrated, barred from working for GCHQ, and eventually driven to suicide.
Graham Moore, who wrote upcoming biopic The Imitation Game, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, revealed in this month’s issue of GT that he faced a lot of opposition when he decided to develop the film.
He said: “I kept going to people and saying, ‘Hey there, so I still want to make that film about a gay English mathematician…’
“And they were like, ‘No, that’s the worst idea for a movie I ever heard. No one will ever make that movie, no one will ever want to act in that movie.’
“We were lucky enough to get our financing independently, so we could at that point go ahead, and not make compromises about who we wanted.
“We got our first choice for every person on the crew. Benedict raised his hand very early on and said he wanted to be a part of this.
“He was everyone’s first choice, and he’s somewhat more well known [in the UK] than he is in America, but we always knew we wanted an actor like him.”
A report in the Sunday Times last week claimed that a gay sex scene was present in an early draft of the film, but was ditched from the final script to make it “sellable”.
Read the full interview in November’s issue of GT, which is available to buy at www.gtdigi.co.uk or in shops.
