Throughout his career, Tom Hanks has played a wide variety of roles in a diverse range of film genres. It has recently been announced that he will star in the upcoming World War II drama ‘Greyhound’. Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana will be the setting for most of this movie with some of the filming taking place aboard the USS Kidd. Pre-production for this movie began recently and filming is expected to begin in March. Overall, filming is expected to last for approximately 150 days.
There is a reasonably good budget to work with for the production of this movie as it is being made on $50 million. The costs will include paying the 250 employees that will be used throughout the process of creating this new movie. However, these are worthwhile costs as it is believed that the movie will bring the state approximately $30 million in movie-related spending, according to the Louisiana Economic Development Agency. Last year, Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law an initiative intended to promote film production. It included a five percent tax credit for motion pictures filming in Louisiana. He has a said that this film is the first to take advantage of the new initiative in the state.
The rights to the movie have been bought by Sony Pictures. It has also been announced the Gary Goetzman will produce the film. He is the Playtone partner of Tom Hanks. Directing this war drama is Aaron Schnider. He has won an Academy Award for Short Film when he directed ‘Two Soldiers’. His feature film debut was ‘Get Low’ and this was released in 2009. Schneider received great critical acclaim for his direction of this movie.
Tom Hanks is taking on the roles of both scriptwriter and actor in this movie. He is playing the role of Commander George Krause who is in charge of the ship. He is a career Navy officer who is finally given the honor of commanding a Navy destroyer. In the movie, he has to face his personal demons and self-doubts. The name of his ship is ‘Greyhound’ and this was the inspiration for the name of the film. Hanks’ role in this film is similar to his role in ‘Captain Phillips’.
In his role as the scriptwriter, Hanks is adapting the script from the novel ‘The Good Shepherd’ which was written by C.S. Forester, an English author. Another work by this author is ‘The African Queen’, which was adapted into a film in 1951. It was directed by John Huston and starred Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Forester also wrote the ‘Horatio Hornblower’ series of novels. Steven Bersch, the president of Sony Worldwide Picture Acquisitions, is brokering the deal along with FilmNation and CAA. FilmNation is also fully financing the production of this film. Both Schneider and Hanks are repped by CAA, although Schneider is managed by Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
As production of this movie is set to begin in the spring of 2018, Sony should have an impressive movie to add to its release calendar for later in 2018.
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