Benedict Cumberbatch may take on the role of Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game", a screenplay by Graham Moore that is the basis of a much-anticipated film.

The script was originally snapped up by Warner Bros with Leonardo DiCaprio expected to star, but over a year later the English actor who has played Steven Hawking and Sherlock Holmes is currently in talks with Black Bear Pictures for the role, according to Deadline.com.

 Benedict Cumberbatch

With 2012 having been the centenary of Alan Turing's birth, the circumstances of his life were the center of a great deal of attention. Not only was he a mathematician, logician and computer scientist who used all of these skills to help decrypt the Nazi codes during World War II, he was a criminally prosecuted homosexual, sentenced to undergo both chemical castration and psychiatric treatment who committed suicide by eating a a cyanide-laced apple.

Graham Moore' s screenplay is based on Alan Hodges'  biography Alan Turing: The Enigma. It isn't the first time that this biography has been dramatized. The play "Breaking the Code" was first staged in 1986 and later televised. It was shown across the world during the Turing Centenary and there were several other dramatizations including an opera.

Alan Turing

Let's hope Cumberbatch accepts the role because he would make an interesting Turing to say the least!