Benedict Cumberbatch plays the Oscar game in trailer for ‘The Imitation Game’

Benedict Cumberbatch will likely find himself in the Oscar game thanks to his starring role in The Imitation Game, if the newly released trailer is any indication.

Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing – the brilliant, difficult scientist who helped crack the German Engima Code for the Allies – in this Morten Tyldum-directed flick.

The trailer seems to focus entirely on his efforts to unravel Enigma (with the help of Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and the Irish driver from Downton Abbey), but hopefully the film also highlights Turing’s post-war struggle and prosecution for homosexual acts in 1952.

Turing was posthumously pardoned by the Queen just last December.

The Imitation Game arrives in US/UK cinemas this November, and lands locally January 1, 2015.