How’s this for Oscar Bait: The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock helms Kelly Marcel‘s 2011 Black List script about Walt Disney’s 14-year effort to convince author P.L. Travers to allow him to adapt her novel Mary Poppins into a film, with Emma Thompson in talks to play Travers, and Tom Hanks on board to play Walt?  Might as well start handing out the Oscars now and get it over with.

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Universal and Tom Hanks‘s production company Playtone have optioned the book In The Garden of Beasts, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Hanks is also supposedly eyeing a lead role in the film. Based on the Erik Larson novel, the non-fiction novel tells the story of William Dodd, an American Embassador in 1930′s Germany who grows to see the rising evil around him.

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Is Tom Hanks Old Yeller in Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? It seems likely. Honestly, it’s surprising that it’s taken ten years for Hollywood to make a film that uses (and perhaps exploits) the tragedy of September 11, 2001 to make a movie about death (and perhaps a chance to feel good about being alive). Hanks stars with newcomer Thomas Horn, and vets like Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, Viola Davis, and James Gandolfini. Take a look at the trailer…

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Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are movie stars in a world that no longer respects stardom. Studios are more interested these days in titles that have name brand recognition (it requires less work) and so the two appearing together in a film in 2011 means that it’s met with a curious indifference. Shouldn’t Larry Crowne be a bigger deal? Well, like the film itself, the appeal is mellow and surprisingly unassuming, and it’s pleasures are more in what it’s not (loud and dumb) than what it is (a formulaic romantic comedy). Find out more below…

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It’s strange that two of the biggest stars in the world are making a low key romantic comedy, but such is the industry. When Julia Roberts rocketed to the A-list, it was because of her role in the hundred million dollar hit Pretty Woman, while Tom Hanks cemented his leading man status with a film like Sleepless in Seattle. Hanks and Roberts partnered together for Larry Crowne – Hanks’s second directorial effort – and their chemistry together is as palpable in the film as it is in this interview. Check it out…

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Studios can promise you the end of a franchise, but when a a film makes more than $1.6 billion, they’re going to rethink it. Tom Hanks, the voice of the Toy Story‘s beloved Woody, just told the BBC that Toy Story 4 is happening. During the premiere of his newest movie Larry Crowne, Hanks also told “Showbiz Tonight” that he believes another Woody and Buzz Lightyear movie is underway (via The Marquee Blog).

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“Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, together at last!” That’s the marketing hook for Hanks’s film Larry Crowne, which he co-wrote and directed – or at least what’s supposed to be appealing about this. Then again, they were in Charlie Wilson’s War together, and that disappeared. The first trailer played up the idea of a man (Hanks) starting his life over after being laid off, this new trailer goes less with the melancholy, and more the yuks by playing up the presence of George Takei and Cedric the Entertainer. Check it out…

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Well, for anyone that isn’t totally sick of Green Day or American Idiot (hello to all three of you), this will come as great news: the pop-punk band’s concept record turned Broadway musical has been sold to Universal Studios and will now be adapted into a film, allowing its dark dominion over pop culture and all of our minds to be complete (kind of like Videodrome, but without James Woods going nuts and killing everyone).

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When we last heard from the Wachowskis they were smarting from the failure of 2008′s  Speed Racer, and still known in the public for failing to deliver with the Matrix sequels. They will now be returning with a collaboration with Tom Tykwer to co-write and direct Cloud Atlas, which has signed Tom Hanks as one of its stars, and will be distributed stateside by Warner Brothers.

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