The last time director Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks worked together, the result was Captain Phillips, which did solid business at the box office, scored several Oscar nominations and spawned any number of memes and impersonations around "I'm the captain now, Irish". They're looking to team back up again for a new project, News Of The World.
It's one that Hanks has already been attached to for a couple of years, originally hitting the news radar in 2017 with Lion's Luke Davies writing the script. He's still listed as the writer for the film which, we're going to have to point out again is nothing to do with the defunct newspaper.
Instead, it adapts Paulette Jiles' 2016 novel, is set in post-Civil War 1870 and follows a road trip through the tough territory of the West by unlikely travelling partners. One is Texan Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), who journeys to far-flung towns reading news to locals who can't access it, and making sure they know what's going on in the world. While on a trip to spread the word about the passage of the 15th Amendment – which gave voting rights to all men in the US – he's asked to escort a 10-year-old girl to her relatives in San Antonio after she was rescued from a native tribe that killed her family four years earlier. Trouble is, she didn't want to be rescued in the first place and resents being taken to live with people she doesn't truly know. Kidd, meanwhile, struggles with his faded relationship to his own daughter and the concern that newspapers will put him out of business.
Greengrass is hammering out a deal now to direct, and casting should start soon for other key roles.
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