'A Hologram for the King' film will star Tom Hanks

Dave Eggers' National Book Award finalist will star and be produced by 'Cloud Atlas' actor Tom Hanks.

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L: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Tom Hanks (l.) will reportedly star in and produce a film adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel 'A Hologram For the King.'

Tom Hanks will reportedly star in and produce the film adaptation of Dave EggersNational Book Award finalist “A Hologram for the King.”

“King” will be directed by Hanks’ “Cloud Atlas” co-director, Tom Tykwer, who helmed the movie with Andy and Lana Wachowski. Tykwer also adapted “Hologram” into script form.

Hanks and the other partner in his Playtone production company, Gary Goetzman, will serve as two of the film’s producers.

The story follows a businessman who travels to Saudi Arabia to attempt to sell an IT system to the country’s monarch, a sale that would allow him to save himself from financial ruin.

The actor recently starred in the Oscar-nominated film “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” (another book adaptation) as well as “Cloud” and will portray Walt Disney in the film “Saving Mr. Banks,” which is slated for this December.

“Hologram,” which was released in 2012 and was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 best of the year as well as one of the 10 best of the year by Amazon.

Monitor critic Yvonne Zipp found the book interesting but wrote that “this novel feels smoothly done, but familiar” with its similarities to “Death of a Salesman” and “Waiting for Godot."

“The revelations aren't new, but any middle-aged person wondering where his or her career disappeared to during the past five years will easily relate to the main character,” she wrote.

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