At the beginning of this year, Twitter rejoiced when Sony announced that Tom Hanks had been cast as Mister Rogers in an upcoming, still untitled biopic about the late television personality. This week, the world’s hearts collectively exploded when the production company released the first photo of Hanks as Rogers.
In the photo, which Sony released via Twitter on Thursday afternoon (September 27), Hanks sits in the doorway of his on-set trailer, smiling at the camera as he holds a book open on his lap. He’s the spitting image of Fred Rogers, thanks not only to his newly gray hair and eyebrows, huge smile, and twinkling blue eyes, but also to his khakis, blue sneakers, and, of course, that iconic red cardigan, zipped up over a light-blue dress shirt and patterned tie.
PHOTO: Fotos International/Getty Images
Twitter users, of course, have a lot of feelings about the pic. Reactions to the shot include a multitude of crying-face emojis, plus plenty of people counting down the days until they get to say that they will, indeed, be Tom Hanks-as-Mister Rogers’s neighbor.
Earlier this year, director Marielle Heller spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the film, which was previously titled You Are My Friend, but is currently untitled and isn’t a typical biopic. “It’s a movie that’s largely focused on a reporter and [Mr. Rogers’s] relationship to his life, and how [the reporter’s] whole world changes when coming in contact with Fred Rogers,” Heller said. That journalist, per EW, is Tom Junod, who was deeply impacted by the time he spent while profiling Rogers for Esquire in 1998. “It’s a story for our times, a story about kindness and family connection and trying to tap into our better self. God knows we need that right now!” Heller added. “In the research for the movie, the writers found that more people than they could possibly count credited Mr. Rogers with changing their lives.”
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