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Nikola Tesla to Surface in Another Movie, This Time As an Action-Adventure Hero Alongside Mark Twain

Inventor and electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images) Photo: Roger Viollet/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Nikola Tesla is one of Hollywood’s new hot commodities. In addition to playing a big part in The Current War — the upcoming Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle about Thomas Edison’s rivalry with George Westinghouse — Tesla is also the focus of a new movie just picked up by CBS Films. Deadline reports that Tesla & Twain is an action-adventure film about the real-life friendship between the Serbian-American electrical engineer and author Mark Twain. While it is true that the two were friends (Tesla supposedly almost invented the X-Ray while taking a picture of Twain in his lab) action and adventure would seem to be at odds with Telsa’s reputation for working obsessively. Erik Siegel, screenwriter of the forthcoming The Emoji Film, brought the movie to CBS. No actors are attached, but maybe the Tesla of The Current War, Nicholas Hoult, would be down to take the character out of the lab and into some late-19th-century shenanigans.

CBS Is Making a Nikola Tesla–Mark Twain Action Film