Brits want an official investigation into the Brexit Leave campaign. They’re getting an HBO drama instead.
On Friday, HBO revealed the trailer for its upcoming film Brexit, a Toby Haynes-directed drama about the 2016 Vote Leave campaign that “goes behind the scenes, revealing the personalities, strategies and feuds of the Leave and Remain campaigns,” according to HBO.
Set to premiere on HBO and the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 on January 19, Brexit aims to be a dramatic retelling of the highly advanced political campaign that encouraged Brits to vote to leave the European Union — a campaign whose tactics, motivations, and repercussions are yet to be fully understood.
The film, an international co-production with BBC Studios, Channel 4, and House Productions, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the man who spearheaded that campaign: Dominic Cummings.
Cummings, whom the trailer introduces by saying “Meet the man behind Brexit,” was the Campaign Director for Vote Leave from its creation in October 2015, and is credited with coming up with the slogan “Take back control.” (Observer columnist Nick Cohen recently called him “the most important contemporary figure 99 percent of the population have never heard of.”)
In the trailer, Cummings appears to stoke racial resentment, asking, “Is it immigration? You can be honest. Is it race? Which countries don’t you like?” — while writing “Turkey” on a door covered in notes and explaining the Leave movement as about a desire to “return to a time when we knew our place.
