There must be a reason that in the space of a year, three on-screen depictions of Britain's World War II Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, will be released.
Acclaimed Scottish actor Brian Cox will play the venerable statesman in the upcoming film Churchill, set in the two-days before the D-Day landings in 1944.
The actor believes that this renewed interest in Churchill is related to our dissatisfaction with the current leadership.
"There isn't a lot of principle around at the moment," Cox told AAP in Sydney.
"I think what is lacking is this kind of standard of what he had and a vision, responsibility and honour. He was that extraordinary thing; a man of destiny, like Mandela or like Napoleon, and that's what's so remarkable about him is that he did literally win the war.
"There isn't anyone like that any more."
The film, based on a script written by historian Alex von Tunzelmann, is the first film-version of Churchill to be released this year with Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as the Prime Minister, due for release later in the year.
Churchill also comes just months after US actor John Lithgow took on the role for popular Netflix show, The Crown.
However, this film focuses in on a particular period of time, showing Churchill's deliberations and doubts over supporting the allies in the Normandy landings. His greatest fear was repeating the fallout of his ill-fated command at Gallipoli in 1915.
"Here you have somebody who made a mistake, way back during the first World War, a mistake that he recognised," he said.
"It didn't work, it was a campaign that caused, particularly in this country, a lot of grief. A lot of young Australian men lost their lives which was pretty horrendous and he was not an insensitive individual. He resigned straight away and went to the front, as a form of penance he went right into the thick of it as a Major."
Mad Men's John Slattery plays the General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with Miranda Richardson as Churchill's wife Clementine who he really turned to to find the strength to support this battle plan.
It wasn't easy considering, as Cox points out, Churchill had an alternative plan.
"There's a contention in this whole thing and he was a strategist, he did understand it, but was also regarded as an ego maniac and he did have a huge ego so that didn't serve him well, which is why he was out in the wilderness for so long. But the one thing that did serve him was his complete distrust of Adolf Hitler and the whole of the German Reich.
He saw it coming when there was an atmosphere of appeasement," he said.
Cox says, despite his mistakes, Churchill's best quality was learning to deal with them particularly at this point in history.
"This is the last opportunity for him for a redress of a situation and that's why it's quite dramatic, the Churchill film, because it is about a man trying to make a redress," he said.
*Churchill will be released in select Australian cinemas from June 8
