The Current War was supposed to be an Oscar contender.
After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, the story of Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse’s race to complete and implement their own competing electric power transmission systems in the late 1880s and early 1890s was originally scheduled for release at the end of November, 2017, ahead of an awards season push.
But as a Harvey Weinstein film, “The Current War” quickly became collateral damage once all of the sexual assault revelations involving the producer came to light.
I recently had the chance to speak to Katherine Waterston, who starred opposite Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon in “The Current War,” and she admitted that the film now probably won’t ever see the light of day.
Waterston touched upon “The Current War” after she revealed that she had worked in Newcastle, England, which provoked to me ask what film she had shot there.
“This movie, sadly I don’t think anyone will ever see it, I haven’t heard what is going to happen to it. It was a Harvey Weinstein produced film called ‘The Current War.’ It also starred Michael Shannon, Benedict Cumberbatch as well, and this amazing director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. But it is somewhere locked up in all of that now. It is sad.”
I then asked how she felt about the fact that “The Current War” wasn’t going to be released. “You just have to let it go. It breaks my heart mostly for Alfonso. Because he is at the start of his career and to not be able to show what he has worked on for two years is tragic. You see the wreckage caused by this one man.”
I was speaking to Waterston about her latest film “State Like Sleep,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month, and revolves around a young woman retracing the final days of her husband, who killed himself a year earlier.
