Paramount and Warner Bros. will be teaming to bring an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to the screen with Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks attached to star. Adapted by Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), the film will be directed by Stephen Daldry and produced by Scott Rudin, who previously produced Daldry’s prior Oscar-nominated films The Hours and The Reader.
The book is a follow-up to Foer’s first novel Everything is Illuminated, which was adapted by Liev Schreiber for a 2005 movie starring Elijah Wood. Although Bullock and Hanks will be the big names to sell the movie and the story is told through multiple narratives, the real focus of the story is their intelligent but quirky 9-year-old son Oskar Schell, who one assumes will be played by a newcomer. In the novel, Oskar is looking for a lock that matches a key left behind by his father after he died on 9/11.
They hope to start filming the movie in mid-January in New York.
