WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Thursday renewed his attack on a film about the whistle-blowing website, calling it a "geriatric snoozefest" as he released a letter written to its star Benedict Cumberbatch.­

The Australian hacker, who has been holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy in London after claiming asylum a year ago to avoid extradition to Sweden, has refused to meet the British actor.

Cumberbatch stars as Assange in director Bill Condon's thriller The Fifth Estate, which won ovation at its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last month and will be out in the United States next week.

He requested a meeting to study his subject's manner, but Assange refused as "such an interaction might appear to legitimize a film intending to mislead the public with numerous inaccuracies."

"I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film," said Assange's letter to Cumberbatch, who revealed that he thought of quitting the film after getting it in January.

"Feature films are the most powerful and insidious shapers of public perception, because they fly under the radar of conscious exclusion," said the letter.

"This film is going to bury good people doing good work, at exactly the time that the state is coming down on their heads. It is going to smother the truthful version of events, at a time when the truth is most in demand.

"As justification it will claim to be fiction, but it is not fiction. It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice."

In comments accompanying the letter's release, he said the result was "a geriatric snoozefest that only the US government could love."

Assange said Cumberbatch's reply was "courteous and considered" with the actor admitting aspects of the script troubled him.

WikiLeaks enraged the United States in 2010 by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a huge cache of US diplomatic cables that embarrassed governments worldwide.

AFP