Morten Tyldum is the director who delivered the superb Headhunters (Hodejegerne) (Filmstalker review), the film adaptation of the Jo Nesbø, and word is that his next film will see him tackling a hugely influential and important British figure who has a truly fascinating and tragic story to tell, Alan Turing.

The film will also see the director come to Hollywood, and why not considering how well Headhunters looked and played out, it was superbly written and directed and delivered a fantastic thriller.

When word of a film about Alan Turing was first touted I wrote a few paragraphs about him and I don't think I should try rewriting these so here they are again:

Alan Turing was a great man, full stop. He was a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist and developed many concepts, machines and processes used in computer science well after his death. Not only is he credited with helping break many German codes during the war as he worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, but he was the man behind the breaking of the Enigma machine, created the designed for the first stored computer program, and predicted chemical reactions that were observed after his death.

He was a great man, and undoubtedly he saved many lives during the war and perhaps helped shorten it. For that he received an OBE and became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and quite frankly he should have received much, much more.

Except he was a homosexual, and for that the government had dispensed with his services and the courts decreed he could either receive injections of oestrogen to curb his desires or go to prison. This began his personal struggles and in 1954 he died. The post-mortem determined he'd committed suicide by cyanide, but his mother still protests that and says it was accidental after an experiment went wrong.

Whatever the real reason, he was betrayed and forgotten by his country who, you could say, were directly responsible for his downfall and death, despite his obvious patriotism and the great things he did for Britain.

Last year in November we heard that Warner Bros. had bought the script called The Imitation Game by the first time writer Graham Moore. Word at the time was that Leonardo DiCaprio was interested in playing the lead and Ron Howard was also showing interest in directing, and at the time we had no idea how deep that "interest" ran other than they are no longer involved in the project it would appear from the latest stories.

The script appeared in the Hollywood Black List a few months later, the list of the top screenplays according to Hollywood executives and their assistants who read a great deal of scripts before they get through to being actual projects.

The story of Morten Tyldum directing comes from Deadline and they also reveal that the original attempt at making it fell by the wayside and the rights returned to the author who went on to write the in production The Devil in the White City also with Leonardo DiCaprio starring.

This time the production company Black Bear is behind it and are looking for buyers but intend to press ahead with the film and find distributors and buyers down the road, which shouldn't be a hard thing considering how well liked the script was and the previous work of the director behind it.

Mind you, I do hope they don't turn it into an American led film and recast all the British people with American leading actors, turning the tale from the dichotomy of success and darkness that it is into something that they think will sell more seats in cinemas for their target audience. I'd hate to see this become another U-571 type of historical rewrite and turn away from the real story of Alan Turing, who he was and what he achieved.