Tom Hanks Announces Blockbuster Casting Call for Upcoming WW2 Epic Film
Say what you will about the liberal political leanings of Hollywood actor, director and producer Tom Hanks, but the man can make a darn good movie, especially when the plot revolves around the military.
According to The New Orleans Times-Picayune, Hanks is set to begin production in Louisiana on a new World War II epic film, but he is looking for some help from a few good men to help round out the cast of the film.
The film, titled “Greyhound,” is an adaptation of the 1955 novel “The Good Shepherd” by C.S. Forester, which tells the story of a career Naval officer given command of a destroyer and the task of escorting a military convoy across the Atlantic Ocean in 1942.
Hanks, who wrote and will produce the film, will also star in the lead role as the ship’s captain who must deal with the rigors of his first wartime action in the lengthy and often overlooked Battle of the Atlantic in WWII.
That campaign was a deadly cat-and-mouse game — or wolf pack-and-shepherd game, if you will — involving groups of German U-boat submarines that hunted allied convoys carrying vital equipment and troops from America to Europe, and the submarine-hunting destroyers that protected the convoys.
According to Task and Purpose, Hanks is looking for some men with a specific experience who can serve as extras in the cast of the film in order to make his movie as realistic as possible.
Thus, a casting call has gone out for men of military age, with prior military experience preferred, who would be willing to act as the crew on a Navy destroyer in WWII.
The casting agency site Backstage specifically requested both African-American and Caucasian males aged 18-49, with “military experience preferred, must be willing to be clean shaven and to get a 1940’s Navy Crewman style haircut.”
Shooting for the film is expected to take place in and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from mid-February to early-April, and there will be “some pay” involved as compensation. The deadline to apply for a role is Feb. 18.
The Times-Picayune noted that though Hanks has never made a full-length feature film in Louisiana before, he isn’t exactly a stranger to the state.
In fact, perhaps owing to his work on the epic film “Saving Private Ryan,” Hanks has been a prominent supporter of and visitor to the National World War II Museum that is located in New Orleans.
He even helped produce and provided the narration for a special film for the museum titled “Beyond All Boundaries,” a compelling and seemingly interactive “4D” 30-minute documentary of the war which includes incredible special-effects interspersed with actual footage filmed during the conflict.
Nor is this the first nautical-themed movie involving the military for Hanks, as he also played the lead role in the highly-acclaimed 2013 film “Captain Phillips” about the efforts of a U.S. Navy SEAL team in their mission to rescue the crew of a merchant vessel that was captured at sea by Somali pirates.
If this new movie “Greyhound” is anything like Hanks’ other military-related films, it should prove to be a blockbuster at the box office once it is released.
If you fit the description of the casting call put out for the flick, and have a bit of free time over the next few months, you may very well end up as a star in the sure to be a hit movie as well.
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