120 year-old cineastes, fans of technological pioneers, and anyone with even a passing interest in the intricacies of copyright law, rejoice! A new Thomas Edison movie has entered that magical place we call “the works” with a view to bringing the inventor’s life to the big screen.
The real Thomas Edison, far from his inventor-of-the-lightbulb lore, was actually an incredibly canny and often ruthless businessman. He’s been attributed with inventing the movie camera (actually Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope), and the lightbulb (actually Nikola Tesla), but was in reality a formidable operator, working the courts and marketing his patented products in a way that would be the envy of modern capitalists. He ended his career with more than a thousand US patents and as a supplier of electricity to millions of American households. His sobriquet, “The Wizard of Menlo Park”, referenced the New Jersey home in which he did his science wizardry.
J. J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot is behind this one, as The Wrap reports. Abrams, of course, is tied up with Star Wars and his production partner Bryan Burk was unavailable for comment but it looks like challenging The Weinstein Company’s long germinating Edison project, The Current War. That one focuses on Edison’s battles against fellow inventrepreneur George Westinghouse in the field of electrical power distribution.
More on this as it comes in. For more on Edison’s contributions to the movie game, meanwhile, head to Empire’s Birth Of Cinema section of Film Studies 101.