Benedict Cumberbatch is pretty much on the precipice of stardom, if not already there. As the villain in both “Star Trek Into Darkness” and “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” this year, his wonderfully English name will be increasingly familiar to American audiences, and that’s not to mention a potential awards baiting performance as Julian Assange in “The Fifth Estate” this fall. So what’s next? He’s gonna get some period clothes out of the closet again. Not to solve mysteries or endure various dramas, but instead to ride with whatever Guillermo del Toro is cooking up.
Variety reports that Cumberbatch has joined Emma Stone and Charlie Hunnam in “Crimson Peak.” Details are still being kept under guard, so we’ll just have to recycle this quote from the writer/director himself. “It’s set at the turn of the century and it is a gothic romance with ghosts. When I use the GR [gothic romance] term I use it not in the Barbara Cartland model but rather in a Bronte fashion. Dark and stormy and wind-swept,” he wrote on his official forums earlier last year. “This is my first foray into horror since Sci-Fi/Horror ‘Mimic.’ DBB [‘The Devil’s Backbone‘] was more of an essay on ghosts than a ghost story and, except as a producer, I have not returned to scary stuff in a long time.”
This won’t be sitting in his Forever Developing pile, as a February 2014 start is locked down. So basically: old timey horror, Stone, Hunnam, Cumberbatch? Ticket purchased.