It looks like DOCTOR STRANGE won’t be Benedict Cumberbatch’s only foray into the world of magic. The Magic Compass has learned that Cumberbatch is also scheduled to star in a new WWII drama ‘The War Magician’. In this film Cumberbatch will portray British Hero Jasper Maskelyne, a magician who helped the Allied forces fight the Nazis.

Storyscape Entertainment’s Bob Cooper and Richard Saperstein are producing the film and no director is attached to the project yet.

Maskelyne and his exploits have long caught the fancy of Hollywood actors. In fact, Tom Cruise was once going to play him in a feature for Paramount but that project never got off the ground.

The film is being adapted from the fact-based book by David Fisher, with Gary Whitta writing the screenplay. According to legend, Maskelyne put together a dirty dozen-type coterie of illusionists called The Magic Gang. Among other stunts, they created fake tanks and soldiers to give the illusion of troop movement to Nazi spy planes overhead. They used mirrors to shield machine gun nests, disguised tanks as supply trucks, and even managed to create illusions that concealed sites like the Alexandria harbor and Suez Canal, to keep Luftwaffe bombers from blowing them up. Maskelyne’s stunts vexed General Rommel and his unstoppable forces in North Africa and gave the Brits a fighting chance using what the master magician termed “the mass production of tricks, swindles and devices.”

This will be Cumberbatch’s second recent undertaking in magic and illusion. He also will star as the title character in the Doctor Strange, playing the former neurosurgeon who, after a horrific car accident, is taken under wing by a sorcerer to save the world. Marvel will release the film in November 2016.

“The War Magician” will be a co-production between Storyscape, Tony Eldridge’s Lonetree Entertainment and SunnyMarch, Cumberbatch’s own production company. SunnyMarch’s Adam Ackland and Adam Selves are also producing.