German actor Daniel Bruhl has finalized a deal to star alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in DreamWorks’ untitled Wikileaks movie being directed by Bill Condon, The Hollywood Reporter said.

James McAvoy had been in negotiations for the role but talks broke down over scheduling regarding the actor's commitment to Fox's X-Men: Days of Future Past. DreamWorks has fast-tracked its movie and is eyeing a shoot in January.

Bruhl will now play Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who wrote Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (and whose rights DW picked up as well as those of David Leigh and Luke Harding’s book, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War On Secrecy, to form the basis of the feature project).

Cumberbatch is playing Assange, Wikileaks' founder, with Bruhl as his right-hand man, the German tech activist who became the organization’s spokesman. His split with Assange was credited as being one of the events leading to the massive diplomatic cable leak in September 2011 (251,287 United States diplomatic documents were published) and Assange’s eventual downfall.

Bruhl is a star in his native Germany and is best known to American audiences for his key role in Inglourious Basterds in which he played the Nazi war hero who falls for the theater manager played by Melanie Laurent.