Benedict Cumberbatch won’t be scaling Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” after all.
The “Sherlock” star has dropped out of the haunted house thriller for unknown reasons, according to Variety, leaving the “Pacific Rim” director to search for a replacement in time to make the film’s February start date. Cumberbatch first attached himself to the project back in April alongside co-stars Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Charlie Hunnam. The film will be del Toro’s first since “Pacific Rim,” the summer tentpole flick that has so far grossed more than $300 million worldwide.
Cumberbatch will next be seen as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in “The Fifth Estate,” which is scheduled to premiere at next month’s Toronto Film Festival. Other forthcoming films on the actor’s busy slate include director Steve McQueen’s “12 Years A Slave” opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Kenneth Williams and Michael Fassbender, “August: Osage County” co-starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, and Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”
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