How Drunk History Influenced the Ethan Hawke Tesla Movie

Twenty years after premiering Hamlet together at Sundance, Kyle MacLachlan and writer-director Michael Almereyda return to the festival with their new movie, Tesla. Ethan Hawke leads this one as the title character, Nikola Tesla. This interpretation of Tesla’s story is narrated by Eve Hewson’s character Anne Morgan, J.P. Morgan’s daughter. As described in the film’s official Sundance synopsis, Tesla “fights an uphill battle to bring his revolutionary electrical system to fruition. Increasingly displeased by the greed of fellow inventor Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan), Tesla forges his own virtuous but arduous path toward creating the innovative alternate-current motor.”