Benedict Cumberbatch could win an Oscar in 2018 – for a film about lightbulbs

Benedict Cumberbatch was at the centre of the awards race in 2015 for 'The Imitation Game', the Alan Turing biopic which gained eight Oscar nominations, including one for best actor for the 'Sherlock' star. Now it looks like Cumberbatch could feasibly walk the Oscars red carpet again next year for 'The Current War', a new film in which he plays the nineteenth-century American lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison.

'The Current War' has just been given a very Oscars-friendly US release date of Friday December 22, which suggests that Cumberbatch's latest movie should arrive in UK cinemas in January 2018. The film tells of the rivalry between Edison and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) – both of them rivals in the late 1880s in the race to bring electricity to the American people, following on from Edison's 1879 invention of an improved, mass-market lightbulb.

Cumberbatch has been filming 'The Current War' in London and elsewhere in the UK since January. It also stars Katherine Waterston, Nicholas Hoult, Tom Holland and Matthew Macfadyen and is directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon ('Me and Earl and the Dying Girl').

Here are the 15 films that could win Academy Awards in 2018.