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Brilliant, visionary Nikola Tesla (Ethan Hawke) fights an uphill battle to bring his revolutionary electrical system to fruition, then faces thornier challenges with his new system for worldwide wireless energy. The film tracks Tesla’s uneasy interactions with his fellow inventor Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan) and his patron George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan). Another thread traces Tesla’s sidewinding courtship of financial titan J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz), whose daughter Anne (Eve Hewson) takes a more than casual interest in the inventor. Anne analyzes and presents the story as it unfolds, offering a distinctly modern voice to this scientific period drama which, like its subject, defies convention.

Serbian born Nicola Tesla immigrates to the U.S. in the early 1880s and begins working for Thomas Edison. What begins as a warm professional relationship turns into a fierce, hostile rivalry when Tesla quits Edison after feeling he has been unfairly compensated for designing improvements to the company’s inefficient motor and generators designs. Their rivalry forms the basis for the"current wars" in the 1880s and 1890s, as Edison is a proponent of direct current, while Tesla advocates for alternating current transmission of electricity.