Add Tuppence Middleton’s name to the growing list of British talent on board for The Current War.
The actress, best known for roles across Netflix series Sense8 and Black Mirror, has landed the part of Thomas Edison’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) devoted wife Mary, according to Deadline. It signals a reunion between Middleton and Cumberbatch, who were last seen together in Morten Tyldum’s period thriller The Imitation Game, where Alan Turing worked to decipher the infamous Enigma code during the throes of World War II.
A different kind of conflict awaits this time, though, given The Current War is set to chronicle the much-touted legal spat between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison during the late 1880s. Back then, the two intellectuals and inventors disagreed over alternating and direct current as they sought to engineer a sustainable electricity system and market it to the States.
Headed up by director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, we understand that Michael Shannon will take point as Westinghouse, while Alien: Covenant‘s Katherine Waterston and Tom Holland are on board as Westinghouse’s wife Marguerite Erskine and Nikola Tesla, the genius inventor that was once earmarked for Nicholas Hoult.
The Weinstein Company stopped short of disclosing an exact production timeline for The Current War, but we fully expect production to grind into gear some time next year. Michael Mitnick is the screenwriter attached to TWC’s cinematic account of the two tech-savvy titans, while Tuppence Middleton can currently be seen on UK drama series Dickensian.