Tom Hanks will star in a film adaptation of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, Deadline reports.
Saunders’ novel, published in 2017 by Random House, follows Abraham Lincoln, shattered by the loss of his 11-year-old son, Willie, who’s inhabiting a liminal state between death and rebirth. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the novel, which won the Booker Prize, “With this book, Saunders asserts a complex and disturbing vision in which society and cosmos blur.”
Hanks, who won Academy Awards for his performances in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, will play Lincoln in the film, which will combine live action and stop-motion animation. It is set to be directed by Duke Johnson, who previously helmed the films Anomalisa and The Actor. The screenplay is written by Saunders, who is also among the film’s executive producers.
Saunders’ works have been adapted for the screen before. His short story “Sea Oak,” collected in the 2000 book Pastoralia, formed the basis for a television pilot that starred Glenn Close, Jane Levy, and Jack Quaid, while his story “Escape From Spiderhead,” featured in the 2013 book Tenth of December, was adapted into the film Spiderhead with Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
