After a spectacular failure, Thomas Edison reluctantly assembles a team?of great inventors to perform a mysterious project for the villainous Otto von Bismarck, not realizing until too late that not only are their reputations at stake, but their very lives are in danger.

>>>a mysterious project

Vague.? ?A “mysterious project” can mean? any one of a 1,000,001 things which is to say it means nothing nothing in? a logline. The target audience for the logline, movie producers, want to know? specifics.? Don’t play hide and seek with them.? They want to know what protagonist’s objective goal is– they shouldn’t have to guess.

However…

>>>not realizing until too late

Don’t give away midpoint discoveries and reversals.? Those are spoilers.? Loglines are about what a protagonist intentionally set out to do, not about the complications he unintentionally discovers along the way.

Furtherless, the main action of the plot must logically follow from the inciting incident. I don’t see how it must logically follow from Edison’s failure that he works for Bismarck. I don’t see how that failure is a credible inciting incident.

More logical to me would be an inciting incident where German scientists have failed spectacularly. Bismarck, out of desperation, turns to American scientists to develop what his countrymen can’t.

And what hooks Edison into the project (despite the reservations and objections of others) is not just the money — although he? can’t say ‘nein’ to the millions of marks Bismarck throws his way. The hook is the fame and glory that will accrue to his reputation if he can succeed where everyone else has failed.? Edison’s character flaw is not just greed for gain, but also? hubris.

fwiw

Who IS the lead character?? The prime mover in this plot is Bismarck;? Edison seems to be merely an? accessory, an enabler, Otto von’s? dupe.