The Current War

Three brilliant visionaries set off in a charged battle for the future in The Current War, the epic story of the cutthroat competition that literally lit up the modern world. Benedict Cumberbatch is Thomas Edison, the celebrity inventor on the verge of bringing electricity to Manhattan with his radical new DC technology. On the eve of triumph, his plans are upended by charismatic businessman George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), who believes he and his partner, the upstart genius Nikolai Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), have a superior idea for how to rapidly electrify America: with AC current. As Edison and Westinghouse grapple for who will power the nation, they spark one of the first and greatest corporate feuds in American history, establishing for future Titans of Industry the need to break all the rules. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The film was first shown at the 2017 Toronto Festival, with an editing supervised by Harvey Weinstein (co-producer of the film and responsible for its distribution) that its director disliked. Critics severely punished this version. After The Weinstein Company dissolution in 2018 and the acquisition of its rights by a new distributor, the director made a new version of the film introducing several modifications (five additional scenes were re-recorded, 10 minutes of footage were deleted, a new original soundtrack was composed, and so on), released in theaters in 2019. All press reviews shown below are related to this new version, also known as the “director’s cut”.