The writer of The Emoji Movie is making a movie about Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain

By Matt Gerardi | February 3, 2017 | 11:15pm

Aux Features Film

No matter what you think of Sony’s upcoming Emoji Movie, you have to give its screenwriter, Eric Siegel, at least a little credit for figuring out a way to make an actual narrative out of a bunch of static little doodles on your cell phone. Now there’s word of what his next script will entail, and it should be a breeze to write compared to that mess. According to Deadline Hollywood, Siegel has sold a pitch to CBS Films for an action-adventure movie about Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain—you know, based on all the fantastical hijinks those geniuses got up to.

As weird as that sounds, at least Siegel has a shred of actual history to go off of for this one. Tesla and Twain were real-life buddies who are said to have met in New York and become fast friends. One legendary story about the duo that has survived to this day claims Tesla “cured” Twain of a bad case of constipation. The author supposedly visited Tesla’s lab, stood on an oscillating disc for a minute, and got shaken until he had to run to the bathroom. Apocryphal or not, that sounds exactly like the kind of thing the writer of a movie that stars Patrick Stewart as a cartoon turd would bring to life on the silver screen.