Every so often, a package lands that sounds like three separate projects stapled together—Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Philadelphia”) as Abraham Lincoln, a live-action/stop-motion hybrid, and Duke Johnson (“Anomalisa,” “The Actor”) directing for Starburns Industries. Then you clock the source material, and it snaps into focus: George Saunders’ “Lincoln in the Bardo.” Deadline first reported the project setup.
Hanks is set to play a live-action version of Lincoln in the adaptation, which is based on Saunders’ 2017 novel. Johnson, who co-directed “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman, is directing the feature.
What makes this feel immediately intriguing is that Saunders’ book was never built like a conventional historical drama. It centers on Lincoln’s grief after the death of his 11-year-old son Willie, but it unfolds as a choral, liminal, often uncanny work populated by voices from the living and the dead. The Booker Prize site describes it as a “startlingly original” exploration of death and grief, with Willie trapped in a state of limbo while Lincoln moves through the graveyard in mourning.
The film will use a blend of stop-motion animation and live action to explore one of the most intimate periods of Lincoln’s life, centering on his relationship with his recently deceased son and expanding into an ensemble of characters “both living and dead, historical and invented.” That’s a strong match for Johnson, whose best work has a tactile emotional weirdness to it—human, melancholy, and a little off-center in all the right ways.
The production setup also points to a serious swing rather than a speculative package. Hanks and Gary Goetzman are producing through Playtone, while Johnson, Paul Young, and Devon Young Rabinowitz are producing for Starburns Industries. Steven Shareshian, Aaron Mitchell, and Saunders are listed as executive producers, and production is expected to take place in London.
No release date has been announced yet. But as an “unlikely project” headline comes to life, this one already stands out—Hanks bringing the gravity, Johnson bringing the handmade unease, and Saunders’ novel giving them a shape that doesn’t fit the usual prestige template. If it lands, it won’t look like much else in the current development pipeline.
