Fined-tuned and pared-down there were more than 60 drafts in total, the screenplay for The Current War made its way onto the prestigious Black List, Hollywood's repository of highly-rated, unmade scripts. It was quickly picked up, initially by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, before finding its way into the hands of American director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who had made a splash at Sundance in 2015 with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the film is a dramatization of the 'war of the currents' between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.