Simply being smart does get you somewhere in life after all. Deadline is reporting that 12-year-old Jeopardy! winner Thomas Horn has been cast by director Stephen Daldry in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s novel was scripted by Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and will star Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.
Horn will fill the role of 9-year-old Oskar Schell, “an exceptionally intelligent kid…whose father is killed in the World Trade Center collapse.” The story follows the boy finding a “a key left behind in his father’s belongings, and sets out on a cathartic journey to uncover the lock.” Hopefully Horn gets paid more than the $31,800 in prize money he took home from Jeopardy! This will mark Daldry’s first film after the disappointing, yet Oscar-nominated, The Reader in 2008.
Were you fan of The Reader? Are you looking forward to this?