By James White | Posted 2 Nov 2016

The cast for Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's period legal drama The Current War is growing quickly. With Katherine Waterston just added, now word arrives that Tom Holland will also have a role in the new movie.

Written by Michael Mitnik, the film will follow the real-life public clash between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) as to who was going to decide the future of the electricity industry in the 1880s. Edison favoured direct current, while Westinghouse and several other companies preferred to push alternating current. Caught between them is inventor Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), with Waterston on as Westinghouse's wife.

As for Holland, he'll be playing Edison's right hand man, Samuel Insull. The film should be shooting next month, looking to get out ahead of Imitation Game duo Morten Tyldum and Graham Moore, who are adapting Moore's book about the fight, The Last Days Of Night. They have Eddie Redmayne aboard to play lawyer Paul Cravath (who defended Westinghouse from a lawsuit by Edison), and have a February start pencilled in.

Holland returns to the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is out here on 7 July.