Alfonso Gomez-Rejon: The Current War is a feeling of rebirth

Picture Courtesy: PR

Fined-tuned and pared-down there were more than 60 drafts in total, the screenplay for The Current War made its way onto the prestigious Black List, Hollywood's repository of highly-rated, unmade scripts. It was quickly picked up, initially by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, before finding its way into the hands of American director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who had made a splash at Sundance in 2015 with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the film is a dramatization of the 'war of the currents' between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

"Earl was an attempt to understand loss," he adds, "and The Current War looked beyond that. A feeling of rebirth through creativity, spontaneity, invention. A love of making things and a chance to explore the true nature of winning." Edison would be defeated by his rival and broken by a huge loss, but remain undaunted. He'd go on to help invent the motion picture business, for one thing.

For Gomez-Rejon, who came on board after Cumberbatch, the casting was perfect. "He'd have been my first choice," he says. "His curiosity was so infectious and his energy made the set feel so alive. And he went so effortlessly into the dark side of Edison."

Witness the clash of titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse as they race against time and each other to bring the magic of electrical power to America. With a starry cast that included Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland, and Nicholas Hoult, the movie is distributed by PVR Pictures in India.

PVR Pictures brings the movie in theaters nationwide today, the 1st of November.

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