The Current War has a release date for Korea - January 2019!

Hopefully this is the first of many international releases from Lantern!

I was secretly hoping there would be a new trailer though - with a certain Mr Molony in it!

Here is an article in The Washington Post mentioning 'The Current War.'

It's good to know there is a bidding war around the film - but I thought Lantern had already bought it, with 13 Films distributing. Perhaps that is just for international distribution and this refers to domestic?

BUT THIS SENTENCE IS SOO EXCITING

"The movie has been recut since its Toronto 2017 showing, with Martin Scorsese even giving notes to the director"

Martin bloody Scorsese!

EllieForster wrote:

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If recut means more Damien not less, I'm happy 😊 I would just like to see him on the big screen (saw 'Kill my Friends' on streaming not in the cinema).

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 Yes, exactly Ellie, but the Kemmler story was completely relevant to the war between Edison and Westinghouse, so cutting it would be crazy! 

It's always preferable to for a film to get a theatrical release and be seen on a big screen, always. But at this point, VOD, straight to DVD, I don't care - just let us see it!

New posters and promo photos are coming out for TCW, which on the one hand is fab news and suggests some releases soon , but on the other no sign of Damien!

I am going to be sooooo upset (and the rest of the Molonian fandom - hear this filmy wilmy production people) if after all this time and all the waiting Damien's part has been edited out!

Some positive The Current War news (via Deadline) - and a domestic release at last!

The whole article is well worth reading. Wow, such a great story and wonderful thing that the director finally gets to make and release the film he wanted all along, thanks to Martin Scorsese!

Sparked By A Martin Scorsese Contract Clause, ‘The Current War’ Gets Second Life & Wide Release Commitment From 101 Studios

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s The Current War has a new cut and the kind of second chance that most prematurely premiered festival films never get. Upstart 101 Studios has closed a deal for domestic distribution rights and will make The Current War its first substantial theatrical release, eyeing August.

Gomez-Rejon presented them with an overhauled picture that added five scenes and still came in a good ten minutes shorter than the cut that premiered two Toronto festivals ago. The director got the chance to do his own cut because of a lucky unexpected break: a final contractual sign-off by executive producer Martin Scorsese hadn’t been executed, which legally prevented TWC’s new owners — Lantern Entertainment — from setting a quick overseas release with a cut the director disliked

The difference from the Toronto cut to now?

“Everything missing is there now, including the right pacing that escalates the tension between these two men,” Gomez-Rejon said. “The heart of the film is restored: Edison’s relationship with his wife, and the explanation of her fatal illness and what it did to him. You feel her loss deeply and it carries you through as he goes to a dark side without her there to humanize his ambition. Westinghouse has been humanized without making him a saint, and there are now layers and complicated performances so that instead of spoon-fed emotion, everything is earned. The music heightens the tensions of their war. There are new scenes with Tesla, who was never meant to be a lead character but now you see his genius and vulnerability. He doesn’t feel forgotten in this movie, and he gives heart and clarity to the clash between these two men and what drives them to go to such dark places.”

It really does Rosie, or at least a film that is more the vision intended by the director and makers---- and that they have reclaimed ownership of after all the horribleness that has surrounded it through no fault of their own. Hopefully this rebirth of the film will feel like a fresh start for all involved. Truly amazing story - perhaps worthy of a film itself.

Fascinated to hear they shot new scenes and that in the toronto version scenes were cut in pre-production. Wish we knew what difference all this makes to Damien's role! There is a mention of the electric chair - which is the aspect of the story between the two big rivals that his character Bourke Cockran would appear in - but not a clue if this means this part of the story was not meant to be there or that it wasn't done properly. or that all the additional material is Tesla, Westinghouse and Edison directly.

"As he watched, he replayed in his head every scene he was forced to cut in pre-production or that he lost in editing that would have made believable the intensity of the rivalry between Edison and Westinghouse. Instead, in that Toronto version, Cumberbatch’s Edison came off a narcissist and Shannon’s Westinghouse too classy a gentleman to get in the mud with him. Until, finally, Edison taunted Westinghouse’s AC current innovations as dangerous, playing up the potential for fatal accidents in a dramatic public presentation. After that, Westinghouse released correspondence showing that the hypocritical Edison served as a technical adviser on the development of the electric chair, this after Edison proclaimed than unlike his rival he would never use electrical power to harm a human being."

“The film was frozen in time, and I found myself dreaming of being able to present to its new owners my vision for how I would fix it; about the scenes that were cut in pre-production that would have explained so much..”

"And then I get the call from my reps,” he said. “I was getting the film back and had six to eight weeks and the chance to shoot one extra day. I was never more prepared for anything in my life. A lot of actors needed to be there on one Saturday in December and they all stepped up. We had this farmhouse and one room was Tesla’s office, another was Edison’s bedroom, and on and on.” 

“Everything missing is there now, including the right pacing that escalates the tension between these two men,” Gomez-Rejon said. “The heart of the film is restored: Edison’s relationship with his wife, and the explanation of her fatal illness and what it did to him. You feel her loss deeply and it carries you through as he goes to a dark side without her there to humanize his ambition. Westinghouse has been humanized without making him a saint, and there are now layers and complicated performances so that instead of spoon-fed emotion, everything is earned. The music heightens the tensions of their war. There are new scenes with Tesla, who was never meant to be a lead character but now you see his genius and vulnerability. He doesn’t feel forgotten in this movie, and he gives heart and clarity to the clash between these two men and what drives them to go to such dark places.”