In news seemingly engineered to infuriate people who love talking about the zombie apocalypse and saying stuff like “bacon is full of win,” J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk’s Bad Robot production company is reportedly working with Paramount on a movie depicting Thomas Edison as “a rugged eccentric genius.” That description comes from TheWrap, which reports the news based on information from several people familiar with the project. “Edison was a hack!” the nerds will shriek. “Tesla was the real genius! Tessslaaaaaa!”
Indifferent to their cries, Bad Robot would introduce the movie to its existing slate of nerd triggers including Lost, Star Trek Into Darkness, and, potentially, the upcoming Star Trek 3 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Details on the project are scant, but the hundreds of inventions generated at Edison’s Menlo Park, N.J., laboratory and his bitter battles with rivals Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse would all be good subjects for a movie. The Weinstein Company has been said to be working on its own Edison-Westinghouse movie, though the last update about that project was in April 2014. An unrelated TV show depicting Edison as a steampunk crimefighter has thankfully not been heard from since 2012.