Tom Hanks Is Making A Comic Book Movie
Tom Hanks is adapting a beloved comic book!
This article is more than 2 years old
Nope — Tom Hanks hasn’t been cast (as far as we know) as Reed Richards or as yet another alternate universe Batman. But the world of comic books encompasses a lot more than just superheroes, and now Hanks is reuniting with the same creative team that helped net him one of his two Oscars to bring a singular comic to the big screen. The actor is adapting the 2014 graphic novel Here by Richard McGuire.
Deadline reports that Tom Hanks is teaming up once more with director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Eric Roth — both of whom, like Hanks, won Oscars for 1994’s Forrest Gump — to adapt Here. Deadline describes the adaptation as “a big-ticket film with a lot of heart,” which they predict is about to start a bidding war between interested studios. Not only is the trio responsible for Forrest Gump, but individually they’ve all helped create wonderful films. Zemeckis is responsible for such classics as Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? while Roth’s most recent writing credits include A Star Is Born, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon.
The notion of adapting Here into a film is an interesting one, considering the graphic novel’s narrative isn’t exactly what you’d call linear and the idea that Tom Hanks or anyone else could play a lead character in it seems bizarre. The first iteration of Here appeared in the comics anthology magazine Raw in 1989. Only 6 pages long, Here showed the life of a single room’s space throughout history. It reached into the future while going as far back as prehistoric times. Often a single panel shows the room in multiple time periods — like adults trying to get a baby to speak in 1965, while in the same panel we see the building they’re in being destroyed in 2030. Richard McGuire would later expand the concept into a 300 page graphic novel, published in 2014.
Of course, this won’t be the first time that Tom Hanks has dipped his toe into the world of comic book adaptations. In one of his more violent roles, Hanks played hitman father of future Superman & Lois star Tyler Hoechlin in 2002’s Road to Perdition. It was based on the 1998 graphic novel of the same name by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner. The comic book was partly based on the influential manga Lone Wolf & Cub by Kazuo Kioke and Goseki Kojima.
If Tom Hanks, Robert Zemeckis, and Eric Roth can make the same kind of magic with Here that they did with Forrest Gump, it should make everyone money and statues. The epic dramedy made $678 million. The film was also nominated for 13 Oscars, 6 of which the film won — including Best Picture, Hanks winning for Best Leading Actor, Zemeckis getting Best Director, and Eric Roth for Best Screenplay Adaptation. Really the only big loser in the whole thing was author Winston Groom, who wrote the book the film was based on. Along with never receiving a penny from the promised profits from the flick, every Forrest Gump cast and crew member who accepted an Oscar forgot his name in their acceptance speeches. Richard McGuire may want to take note of that.
