Josh Singer is an American screenwriter and producer. He is best known for writing The Fifth Estate (2013), Spotlight (2015), The Post (2017), First Man (2018), and Maestro (2023). He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Spotlight and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay for Spotlight and The Post.
Singer in 2018
The Fifth Estate is a 2013 biographical thriller film directed by Bill Condon about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange and Daniel Brühl as its former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci, and Laura Linney are featured in supporting roles. The film's screenplay was written by Josh Singer based in-part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011), as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011) by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film's name is a reference to people who operate in the manner of journalists outside the normal constraints imposed on the mainstream media.
Theatrical release poster
Image: Benedict Cumberbatch 2011
Image: Julian Assange cropped (Norway, March 2010)