Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks Team With Steven Spielberg for Pentagon Papers Drama
What’s that you hear? The sound of Meryl Streep’s 21st Oscar nomination? Or is it the sound of Tom Hanks making it back in to the Best Actor category after getting shut out for Sully? Or maybe it’s Steven Spielberg‘s return to the Oscars following Bridge of Spies? It might be all three now that Streep and Hanks have teamed up on a new political drama helmed by Spielberg that has awards season written all over it.
Streep and Hanks will star in The Post, according to Deadline, a historical drama based on The Washington Post‘s role in exposing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Streep will portray Post publisher Kay Graham while Hanks will portray Ben Bradlee, the editor who was famously played by Jason Robards in All the President’s Men. After The New York Times began publishing excepts of documents on June 13, 1971, The Washington Post did the same just a few days later. The film will chronicle how Bradlee and Graham fought the federal government for the media’s right to share the documents with the public, a subject that’s only becoming more timely in our political climate today.
While this is just the umpteenth collaboration between Hanks and the director, it’s only the second time Streep has acted in a Spielberg film, and the first time she’ll play a lead (she only voiced the Blue Fairy in A.I.). Streep also narrates the upcoming Netflix documentary series Five Came Back, which Spielberg produced and is an interview subject in. In the mean time, Streep will be busy playing Mary Poppins’ cousin in the new sequel, Hanks will play the head of a eerie tech company in The Circle, and Spielberg is fast at work on Ready Player One.