John Goodman Joins 'Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close' With Sandra Bullock & Tom Hanks

Adaptation Aiming For Fall Release That Will Coincide With 10 Year Anniversary Of 9/11

Looks like John Goodman is on a bit of a roll.

After featuring in David Simon and Eric Overmyer‘s HBO series “Treme,” Barry Levinson‘s Jack Kervorkian tale “You Don’t Know Jack” and Kevin Smith‘s Sundance-bound horror film “Red State,” the actor will now follow up with a role in Stephen Daldry‘s upcoming adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s 2005 post-9/11 drama “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close,” joining Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks in the film which also teams Daldry with his “The Hours” producer Scott Rudin.

The novel follows the story a 10-year old boy who “loses his father in the Sept. 11 attacks and goes on a cathartic journey to deal with his loss. He scours New York for information relating to the lock-box key box left behind by his father and meets an assortment of people along the way, each dealing with their own forms of grief and loss that connect and parallel his own.” Goodman will play a doorman who joins the boy — played by recent 12 year old “Jeopardy!” winner Thomas Horn will be taking up the lead role in his feature film debut — on his journey, with Hanks and Bullock as the boy’s parents.

The highly-touted script comes courtesy of “Forrest Gump” and ‘Benjamin Button‘ writer Eric Roth and reportedly features “multiple narrators and time frames.” And, as if this project didn’t sound like enough of an award-season winner, the Warner Bros./Paramount co-production is evidently being set for a timely unveiling that will coincide with the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Shooting will begin this winter. [THR]