The Imitation Game’s Long Road to Acclaim

Few films have received the kind of acclaim given to The Imitation Game. The biopic about Alan Turing—the gay British mathematician largely credited with cracking the Nazis’ secret Enigma code, used to foil the Allies during World War II—got rave reviews and eight Oscar nominations and has grossed more than $90 million at the box office since its November release.

The movie, which comes out today on DVD and Blu-Ray, was a huge undertaking for Oscar-nominated coproducer Nora Grossman.

Grossman (COM’05) had never heard of Turing when her friend (now producing partner) Ido Ostrowsky called six years ago to tell her about an op-ed by Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, where he apologized for his country’s treatment of Turing. After the war, the mathematician and computer scientist was convicted of gross indecency and given a choice of either prison or chemical castration using female hormone injections. He chose the latter, but two years later, at age 41, he committed suicide.

Grossman and Ostrowsky, both underemployed in the entertainment business at the time, envisioned Turing’s story as a feature film and set out to produce it themselves, despite having no moviemaking history. The two talked often via GChat about how to go about such an undertaking. “I think once we started to research Turing’s legacy, and discovered the contributions he made to modern-day technology,” Grossman says, “we realized it was a great story that we needed to tell. It was kind of a pipe dream, and we are still adjusting to the fact that we got the movie made.”

The long road to Hollywood

Having discovered Turing’s story, Grossman and Ostrowsky went on a reconnaissance mission, reading everything they could about the man who today is credited not only with helping to end World War II by breaking the Germans’ encoded messages, but also helping to invent the personal computer. They learned that his work had been classified top secret by the British government after the war because of security concerns, one reason so few knew about him.

Grossman, who had previously worked as a development manager at DreamWorks Television, eventually boarded a plane to London to meet with Andrew Hodges, author of the 1983 biography Alan Turing: The Enigma. She told Hodges that she and Ostrowsky wanted to buy the rights to his book. “We had no producing credits, but I told him how passionate we were, and fortunately he believed in us,” she says.

With the movie rights in hand, the novice producers began to talk up the project. Grossman recalls being at a party, “doing the song and dance you do when you don’t have a job,” and talking about their goal of making the film. Eavesdropping was Graham Moore, previously a writer for the ABC Family TV show 10 Things I Hate about You. Moore knew Turing’s story and expressed an interest in writing the screenplay, saying it would be his personal passion project. Over the next year, he turned out four drafts of the script.

His screenplay found its way onto the list of 2011’s best unproduced screenplays; Hollywood players like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ron Howard were attached to the project before dropping out. The film was shopped around to various producers and financiers, Grossman says, but nobody bit. “At that point we were just trying to make sure the next step got the movie made.”

Five Golden Globe, nine BAFTA, eight Oscar nominations

That next step came in 2012, when independent film producer Teddy Schwarzman read the script and loved it. Things fell quickly into place after that. Norwegian director Morten Tyldum came on board to direct, followed by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, the Emmy-winning star of PBS’s Sherlock, in the Turing role, and actor Keira Knightley, who would play Joan Clarke, the sole woman on Turing’s Enigma team.

Grossman was in England for four months of preproduction and filming. “There was a makeshift video village wherever we were,” she says. “It was a really fun and friendly set, and we were able to go onto the stages and give notes.”

Eventually, the Weinstein Company bought the film’s domestic rights for $7 million—the highest price paid for US rights to a movie at the European Film Market, according to Deadline.com.

The film was shown at major film festivals last fall before its November release, and went on to earn five Golden Globes nominations, nine British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) nods, and eight Oscar nominations, with a win for Moore’s screenplay. Grossman, Ostrowsky, and Schwarzman were also nominated for best picture, but lost to Birdman.

“When we were first going to Telluride for the film festival and doing the circuit, I don’t think we realized the sheer volume of awards shows we would be going to,” Grossman says. “I have a lot of black tie outfits now and nowhere to go, but the whole ordeal was overwhelming, exciting, and fulfilling.”

She says she didn’t fully realize the impact that The Imitation Game would have, not just at the box office, but in educating people about a gross injustice. Since the film’s release, thousands, among them such actors as Cumberbatch, Matt Damon, and Stephen Fry, have signed a petition asking the British government to pardon the 49,000 men who were persecuted under the country’s “gross indecency” law, which was not repealed until 2003. The petition now has more than 600,000 signatures.

“We are so excited that it’s inspired people to take it to this level,” Grossman says. “Now that I can actually take a minute and look back at it, I can’t believe we got to this point where people are discovering Turing’s story in the same way that we did. It shows that his legacy can live on.”