Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon are charged up in first trailer for ‘The Current War’

Caught up in the fallout of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal, the history behind The Current War is almost as fascinating as the subjects of the film itself. The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 but the fall of Weinstein, and with it The Weinstein Company, sent its properties – regardless of development – into a state of orphanhood. Multiple edits and reshoots later, the film is finally ready for its official release and today, the newly formed 101 Studios has unveiled the first official images and trailer for the film.

Official synopsis:

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 Nikola 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 Current War was directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), produced by Timur Bekmambetov and Basil Iwanyk with Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, and also stars Katherine Waterston, Tom Holland, Matthew Macfadyen and Tuppence Middleton.

101 Studios will open The Current War in select theaters on October 4, 2019, and everywhere on October 11, 2019.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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