Michael Shannon Joins Benedict Cumberbatch In TWC’s ‘The Current War’
EXCLUSIVE: Michael Shannon has been cast as George Westinghouse in The Weinstein Company’s The Current War, a fact-based story about how he and rival Thomas Edison competed to create a sustainable electricity system and market it to the US.
He joins Benedict Cumberbatch in the project, who will play Edison. It’s directed by Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’s Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and is financed and distributed by TWC.
Michael Mitnick writes the script, which takes place in the late 1880s and revolves around the two titans and their battle over the supply of electricity. Edison championed the use of a direct current for electric power distribution over an alternating current, which was backed by Westinghouse Electric and a host of European companies. Timur Bekmambetov will produce the project alongside Film Rites’ Steve Zaillian and Garrett Basch.
TWC is eyeing an early December shoot for the film so they’re casting aggressively for other roles.
Michael Shannon is hot property right now, having recently wowed critics at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival with his performance as a grizzled Texas sheriff in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals. He also starred in Werner Herzog’s thriller Salt and Fire, another TIFF project and was most recently seen in Jeff Nichols’ Loving, where he played the LIFE magazine photographer who shot the iconic images of the first interracial married couple in the US. Up next, he’s got roles in Guillermo del Toro’s other-worldly Cold War title The Shape of Water as well as TWC’s TV series Waco, currently in development.
The Current War is one of two projects that’s generating sparks on the Edison-Westinghouse subject at the moment: Teddy Schwarzman’s Black Bear Pictures is fully financing and producing The Last Days of Night, written by Graham Moore, based on his own book which was published through Random House. It’s directed by Morten Tyldum and has set Eddie Redmayne to star, only this story sees Redmayne play famed lawyer Paul Cravath, who is tasked with defending Westinghouse after Edison wins the race to the patent office and sues his rival for an unheard of sum of one billion dollars. Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky of Bristol Automotive also produce. The duo previously paired with Moore, Tyldum and Schwarzman on The Imitation Game. That pic, which saw Moore win the Oscar for adapted script, was released by TWC and starred Cumberbatch so the vie for the electric crown is a real split between that team.
The Last Days of Night is on course for a February shoot and with The Current War aiming for December, the race really is on to see who’s got the bigger horsepower.
Shannon is repped by CAA Wetzel Management and attorney David Krintzman. Cumberbatch is repped by UTA.
Moore is repped by CAA and for publishing by ICM Partners and managed by Think Tank Management. WME reps Tyldum with Anonymous Content. Redmayne is repped by CAA and United Agents.
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