National Geographic Channel President Howard
T Owens has announced that actor, producer, writer and director Tom Hanks is
joining the two-hour television event Killing
Lincoln from executive producers Ridley Scott and Tony Scott’s Scott Free
Productions.
Hanks, a two-time Oscar® winner known for
his roles in Saving Private Ryan, Forest
Gump, Apollo 13, The Green Mile, and The
Da Vinci Code, among many others, will serve as the on-camera host,
historical commentator and narrator.
Hanks joins director Adrian Moat (Gettysburg), Emmy Award-winning
writer/Executive Producer Erik Jendresen (Band
of Brothers) and producer Mark Herzog's Herzog & Co. (Gettysburg) on the film, which is based
on Bill O’Reilly’s New York Times best-selling book Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America
Forever written with co-author Martin Dugard.
Production on the historical thriller
combines the stunning drama with CGI, in the signature style of the Scott
brothers, with rare historical archives. Billy Campbell plays Abraham Lincoln
with Jesse Johnson as John Wilkes Booth and Geraldine Hughes as Mary Todd
Lincoln. Graham Beckel appears as Edwin Stanton (who served as secretary of war
under the Lincoln administration) and Shawn Pyfrom portrays Private John W.
Nichols.
“It's odd to say the killing of Abraham
Lincoln is an unknown story, but it may as well be,” said Hanks. “The depth of
the intrigue, the breadth of the conspiracy and the bare-naked exposure of
human nature is so timeless, it's a wonder how that seminal tragedy in our
history could ever be explained in a few sentences: ‘Ford's Theater… John
Wilkes Booth,’ etc. The murder of Lincoln is not a passage of our history
— it was a signpost of our American character, then, now and forever.”
The film is set to air globally on NGC in
early 2013.
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