After collaborating for one of Tom Hanks’ finest performances in Captain Phillips, director Paul Greengrass has reunited with the actor and is changing up his style. News of the World follows Hanks as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a veteran living a few years after the Civil War has ended who travels from town to town delivering the news. He is tasked with returning a child to her biological family after having been taken by and raised by the Kiowa people.
Ahead of a Christmas theatrical release, Universal has now released the first footage in the form of a one-minute TV spot, which will be followed by the trailer. Co-written by Greengrass and Luke Davies (Lion), the film is based on the National Book Award finalist and best-selling novel by Paulette Jiles.
“When the fabric of society is in tatters, you’ve got a character in Kidd, who in his lonely, singular, small way is a thread who connects one community to another,” Greengrass tells Vanity Fair. “Even though it’s set then, it’s a film about our times. Neighbors and families and communities were in stark and often violent conflict with each other, and Americans needed to decide who they were as Americans.”
See the extended TV spot below and return for the trailer.
Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), a widower and veteran of three wars, now moves from town to town as a non-fiction storyteller, sharing the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes, and gripping adventures from the far reaches of the globe.
In the plains of Texas, he crosses paths with Johanna (Helena Zengel, System Crasher), a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a world she’s never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will.
Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles into the unforgiving wilderness, the two will face tremendous challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home.
News of the World opens this Christmas.