Tom Hanks To Play Mr. Rogers In Biopic 'You Are My Friend'

The nicest guy in Hollywood to play the nicest guy on public television? Yep, it’s happening though one wonders what the dramatic conflict might be in the movie about the gentlest celebrity to have ever existed.

Tom Hanks has signed up play Fred Rogers in “You Are My Friend.” The biopic comes from the pens of Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster (who have both worked on “Transparent“), with Marielle Heller (“The Diary Of A Teenage Girl“) getting behind the camera to direct. It actually sounds like the movie will be borrowing from the format of the David Foster Wallace biopic “The End Of The Tour,” following a cynical journalist hangs out with Mr. Rogers and finds his life transformed (through kindness, probably.)

It sounds all very warm and fuzzy, which is as it should be, and the news comes on the heels of the Sundance premiere of the Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” which touched even the coldest of hearts in Park City.

Production on “You Are My Friend” will begin this fall, and presumably it will be an awards season player in 2019. This movie sounds good and all, but Fred Rogers’ testimony in Congress to save federal funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, might be the only thing you ever need to watch about Fred Rogers. [Variety]