Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions THE COURIER First Trailer Stars Benedict Cumberbatch – In Theaters March 19th

By Michelle McCue | January 27, 2021

Here’s your first looks at Benedict Cumberbatch in the brand new trailer for THE COURIER, only in theaters March 29.

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley, THE COURIER is a true-life spy thriller, the story of an unassuming British businessman Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch) recruited into one of the greatest international conflicts in history.

At the behest of the UK’s MI-6 and a CIA operative (Brosnahan), he forms a covert, dangerous partnership with Soviet officer Oleg Penkovsky (Ninidze) in an effort to provide crucial intelligence needed to prevent a nuclear confrontation and defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The film is directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Tom O’Connor.

The filmmakers say there is more to the story.

Wynne’s mission was to make contact with a Soviet military intelligence colonel named Oleg Penkovsky. They strike up a significant friendship. “Penkovsky likes him and trusts him,” says Cumberbatch. “And Penkovsky sees that loyalty returned when Wynne tries to help him escape.”

Wynne returns to Moscow even after being warned that he would put himself in peril by doing so. Wynne decides that he has to help his friend Penkovsky escape. The KGB catches Wynne trying to help
his friend, and he was arrested on 11 May 1963, and subsequently was sentenced to 8 years in jail.

“And then we get the tragedy of this very ordinary man being stretched to the limits of his endurance, physically and mentally in a Russian Gulag,” says Cumberbatch. “What he endured is all the more incredible considering he wasn’t a trained spook and he had no background or inclination to do the work he was asked to do. He did it out of loyalty to his country.”

Wynne was released from jail in exchange for the spy Gordon Lonsdale in 1964. He would go on to write two books about his experiences in Moscow, The Man from Moscow: The Story of Wynne and Penkovsky (1967) and The Man from Odessa (1981), in which he claimed Penkovsky committed suicide in prison, an account which runs counter to the official and universally accepted belief that Penkovsky died in the gallows after being sentenced to death.

The prison experience changed Wynne. “He was documented as falling into a state where his mental health was challenged. He became an alcoholic and left his wife,” says O’Connor. “He lost his business income and so, needed money.”

Then there was the secrecy that is part and parcel of espionage so MI6 would never acknowledge his work even after he was released. “The British government never publicly acknowledged anything he did or thanked him for what he had done,” adds O’Connor. “He probably felt a lack of gratitude and, I think Greville would have resented that, and I think that is also part of the reason why, when he wrote his book, he wanted to sort of, claim even more credit and that he was more involved than he really was.”

THE COURIER seems to be part of the zeitgeist. Cumberbatch adds, “In the past four years, with Korea, Trump, China, and the pulling up all the old nuclear treaties between Russia and America, these events were happening as we were developing and shooting the film. So, THE COURIER felt a little bit urgent in a rather scary way.”

Produced by FilmNation, 42, and SunnyMarch, directed by Dominic Cooke, THE COURIER is the incredible story of how an unheralded British civilian helped save the world.