Tom Hanks to play Abraham Lincoln in ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ adaptation
Tom Hanks has landed the role of Abraham Lincoln in the upcoming movie from director Duke Johnson, titled Lincoln in the Bardo.
The movie, which will be a live-action/stop-motion hybrid film, is based on George Saunders’ New York Times bestseller and 2017 Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name.
In the live-action segment of the movie, Hanks will bring the historical figure to life. Production for the project is set to take place in London.
Saunders will be adapting the novel into a fitting screenplay; his work will be transformed by Johnson, who previously directed the 2015 psychological romantic comedy-drama film, Anomalisa, which he co-helmed with Charlie Kaufman.
Lincoln in the Bardo follows Lincoln’s grief following the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862. The story, which takes place on a singular evening, blends historical fact with supernatural fiction, as Lincoln exists in a purgatory-like state between death and rebirth.
A chorus of 166 different voices in the novel weaves throughout the story, though it’s unclear how many Saunders will pull through to the screenplay.
A new synopsis shares only that the movie “will explore themes of love, empathy, and human capacity in the face of grief as the story unfolds through an ensemble of characters, both living and dead, historical and invented.”
Alongside Hanks, André Holland is set to co-star. However, his role is as yet unknown.
Hanks’ latest projects include Greyhound, News of the World, Elvis, A Man Called Otto, Asteroid City, and the graphic novel adaptation, Here.
Johnson’s latest project, The Actor, was based on the 2010 Memory by Donald E. The film, which received mixed reviews, followed a New York actor with amnesia in 1950s Ohio who becomes stranded in a mysterious small town and struggles to get back home and reclaim his life and identity.
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