A narrator explains that Tesla was inspired as a young boy when he was petting his cat and saw static electricity.

Edison, on the other hand, has more popularity, twice as many search results, but lives a lavish lifestyle and married and widowed young with his first wife Mary.

While Edison meets Mina, his second wife, in 1885, Tesla pitches his work on his induction motor to investors Brown and Peck.

Edison shows the Westinghouse invention as a capital punishment tool on William Kemmler, who had killed his wife.

In 1899 Colorado Springs, he sets up his Tesla coil to harness and to transmit the power of the lightning storms.

[5] In February 2018, it was announced Ethan Hawke had joined the cast of the film, with Michael Almereyda directing from a screenplay he wrote.

[8] The script was an updated form of the first feature Almereyda ever wrote, a Tesla biopic originally optioned to Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski that was never made.

Almereyda "reinvented it for the present moment," adding details about Tesla that had been published or discovered since then and including changes based on other influences such as films by director Derek Jarman, episodes of Drunk History and author Henry James.

[9] Tesla had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2020, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan Award.

The site's critics consensus reads, "Appropriately bold and ambitious, Tesla takes a number of risks that don't always pay off -- but Ethan Hawke's performance makes those flaws easier to forgive.

"[16] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".