Throughout the 2010s, Benedict Cumberbatch proved that he is one of the best actors working today. Cumberbatch’s best movies include The Imitation Game, The Courier, The Power of the Dog, and the 2023 Wes Anderson-helmed short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Cumberbatch has been praised for numerous roles throughout his career, and was even nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work in The Imitation Game and The Power of the Dog.

In 2016, Cumberbatch also debuted his version of Doctor Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cumberbatch has appeared in six MCU movies and Doctor Strange has become one of the most popular characters in the sprawling franchise. Cumberbatch’s most recent MCU movie, 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, contains many horror sequences. However, Cumberbatch is not necessarily known for starring in horror movies. This could change in 2025 after the release of a Cumberbatch-led film that will also contain elements of horror.

The Thing With Feathers Star & Director Discuss Their Upcoming Movie

The Thing With Feathers Makes Changes To The Novel

Cumberbatch and director Dylan Southern recently compared their upcoming horror-drama film, The Thing With Feathers to the book it is based on. The film is an adaptation of the 2015 novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by author Max Porter, and follows a father and two sons who must handle the sudden loss of their wife and mother. The Thing with Feathers premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2025, but it has not yet been announced when it will receive a wide release.

Screen Rant‘s Grant Hermanns was present at the Sundance Film Festival and spoke with Cumberbatch and Southern about how The Thing with Feathers differs from the novel. Both Cumberbatch and Southern praise the novel, but admit it was difficult to adapt, since Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is an unconventional book that is told from three different perspectives. Cumberbatch and Southern tease that their upcoming movie had to make changes from the original novel. Read their full comments below:

Cumberbatch: It’s just a startling original novel. It’s just the most formally playful, inventive and kind of unique way of expressing something that’s — I think, in the milieu of middle class, middle-aged Brit, it’s quite locked away sometimes, and Max Porter, the novelist, found this amazing kind of metaphor through Ted Hughes’ poems, and this academic succession with them. He slowly realized in the book that it’s all really about the boys. It’s an unreliable narration, it’s about their memory of what happened to their father and what it felt like being around this man who was obsessed with the crow collection of poems at the time, and with our version, Dylan had the master stroke — and he’s really big graphic novel fan — of making my character, Dad, an illustrator, an artist who’s bringing out this book based on inspired by the crow series of poems. So, that’s an immediate extrapolation between that being tactile and realizable on the page to being something in the room.

Southern: It was a process, really. The book’s really unusual, it’s written from three different perspectives. It’s a mixture of prose and poetry, it uses different tenses, it spans multiple years. It’s not an obvious translation to a movie story. So I think it was embracing all of those things and realizing that I could kind of take it wherever I wanted to was the thing that unlocked it, and also the support of Max. Max didn’t have to option the book to me, but he did. He was always there as much or as little as I needed him. In the end, he was blown away by the first draft, and just kept me going. He’s a really good collaborator, so it was good to have him on the side.

Our Take On Cumberbatch & Southern’s Comments About The Thing With Feathers

The Thing With Feathers Could Be Great

The Thing with Feathers is based on a critically acclaimed novel and has an intriguing premise. Additionally, Cumberbatch has consistently proven his ability to give strong performances. Therefore, The Thing with Feathers could be a great movie. The film was one of the most anticipated horror films premiering at Sundance, so hopefully The Thing with Feathers can receive a wide release sooner rather than later.