“The Imitation Game” crosses $100 million at worldwide box office – is highest grossing indie of the year

Judging from the results from other award shows, it doesn’t look like the Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game is going to win any major Academy Awards next month.

But the film, up for eight Oscars, is winning at the box office.

Over the weekend, the film starring Benedict Cumberbatch crossed the $100 million mark in worldwide box office grosses.

In the process, it became the highest grossing independent film released in 2014.

Turing was a key figure in cracking Nazi Germany’s naval Enigma code which helped the Allies win the Second World War, only to later be criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality.

There is now a Change.org petition calling on the British government to pardon all 49,000 men, who like Turing, were persecuted and criminalized under British law for “gross indecency” (section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which was overturned in 1967), which prosecuted them for being gay.

Turing was pardoned last year.

The petition states: “While these 49,000 men have all since passed away, they deserve the justice and acknowledgment from the British government that this intolerant law brought not only unwarranted shame, but horrific physical and mental damage and lost years of wrongful imprisonment to these men.”