'News Of The World' Trailer: Tom Hanks Reunites With Paul Greengrass To Go West

Universal Pictures released the trailer for News of the World, which will reunite Hanks with his Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass in what looks to be another solid bid for awards season. Indeed, Oscar pundits are apparently keeping an eye out for News of the World, which is receiving the same release strategy as Universal's big Oscar contender from last year, 1917, with a December theatrical release (though that strategy may not play out as well this year considering, uh, current circumstances).

But hey, maybe there's no one better to bring audiences back to theaters amid a pandemic than Hanks, America's Dad and the celebrity whose coronavirus diagnosis shocked the U.S. into taking the pandemic seriously. This will be the first time the two-time Oscar winner will be starring in a Western too, which is already cause for excitement. In News of the World, Hanks stars as a widower in the Old West who "travels through the Texas desert to perform a one-man show about true stories from afar," but embarks on a dangerous journey to reunite a young girl (Helena Zengel) with her family after she survives a carriage accident in the middle of nowhere.

News of the World is directed by Greengrass from his screenplay with Luke Davies (Lion), based on the best-selling novel by Paulette Jiles.

Here is the synopsis for News of the World:

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 in theaters on December 25, 2020.