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Ethan Hawke is set to bring to life the turn of the century electrical innovator Niloka Tesla in ‘Tesla’ from IFC Films and writer/director Michael Almereyda (‘Marjorie Prime’). Kyle MacLachlan stars opposite Hawke as Tesla’s greatest rival, Thomas Edison. In addition, Jim Gaffigan appears as fellow electrical engineer George Westinghouse, and Donnie Keshawarz portrays inventor/financier John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan. Eve Hewson co-stars as J.P.’s daughter, Anne Morgan, who looks to be the story’s narrator who inexplicably appears in the present, typing away on a laptop.
“If you Google Nikola Tesla you get 34 million results. It’s basically just four pictures. Beyond that, things get murky.”
At another point, she states:
“The world we are living in is a dream that Tesla dreamed first.”
It seems that the film depicts a romance between Tesla and Anne, but I’m not sure that that’s historically accurate, as Tesla was a well-known eccentric and never married.
Check out the trailer below:
Perhaps the most well-known film depiction of Tesla was David Bowie’s performance in the 2006 Christopher Nolan picture ‘The Prestige’. More recently, Nicholas Hoult played him in ‘The Current War’ in 2017. Earlier this year, Goran Višnjić portrayed Tesla opposite Robert Glenister‘s Thomas Edison in the ‘Doctor Who’ episode “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror.”
‘Tesla’ debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January and the Independent Film Channel picked up the distribution rights. Those that viewed it at Sundance have reacted largely positively, as it has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 12 reviews.
The cast of ‘Tesla’ also includes Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Hannah Gross, Josh Hamilton, James Urbaniak, Rebecca Dayan, Lucy Walters, Blake DeLong, Lois Smith, and Ian Lithgow.
It will be released in theaters (maybe) and VOD on August 21.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter