Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks has been nominated for Academy Award performances six times, but even with that track record, the actor has been overlooked before. The biggest snub arguably was his turn in 2013’s “Captain Phillips” directed by Paul Greengrass (the Bourne’ movies), which did earn him a Golden Globe nomination. If you were annoyed that Hanks and “Captain Phillips” were passed over, fear not, the actor and his director have reteamed for a new film, the Western “News of The World,” coming out in awards season this year.
“News Of The World” centers on a Civil War veteran (Hanks) who agrees to deliver a girl, taken by the Kiowa people years ago, to her aunt and uncle, against her will. They travel hundreds of miles and face grave dangers as they search for a place that either can call home.
The girl in question is newcomer and 12-year-old German actress Helena Zengel. She co-stars alongside Elizabeth Marvel, Mare Winningham, Neil Sandilands and Thomas Francis Murphy, but “News Of The World,” sounds very much like a two-hander between Hanks and the young girl.
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And Hanks raves about his on-screen partner. “I cannot stress enough the incredible power of young Helena Zengel,” he said in a statement. “I believe actors are born. You can’t learn how to be an actor, you just are. Her silences, her eyes, her instincts—she may have no sense of what the rules of acting are, yet she already knows them implicitly.
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Greengrass describes the film as set in a “bitterly divided, dangerous world…. Both characters are lost…[and] overcome great dangers, and ultimately, the film is about a journey towards redemption.” Here’s the official synopsis:
Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), a veteran of three wars, now moves from town to town as a non-fiction storyteller, sharing the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes, and gripping adventures from the far reaches of the globe. In Texas’s plains, he crosses paths with Johanna (Helena Zengel, System Crasher), a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a world she’s never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will. Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles into the unforgiving wilderness, the two will face tremendous challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home.
Universal Pictures plans to release “New of The World” on Christmas Day, 2020. Watch the first official trailer below.