The film adaptation of Dave Eggers’ The Circle is already stacked with talent, boasting Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, and Patton Oswalt. Even so, every cast needs that X-factor to really pull things together—complete The Circle, if you will—and in this case Variety reports that Bill Paxton will step in. The story follows a recent college graduate (Watson) who scores a job at a company called The Circle, which unifies users’ personal emails, social identities, banking information, and just about everything else into one online account. It’s definitely not a combination of Google, Facebook, Paypal, and every other major internet company that’s dominating the tech industry in real life. This is pure fiction, people.
Hanks, Oswalt, and Boyega play three very different founders of the massive company, which initially sweeps Watson’s Mae Holland off her feet with impressive technology, massive parties, and all the perks a millennial could ever dream of. Eventually, The Circle’s insistence on complete transparency in all areas of life cause her to question the ethics of its mission, which occurs in parallel with readers’ confusion as to how a 24-year-old is rising through the ranks of the most influential company in the world so quickly.
James Ponsoldt (The End Of The Tour) is directing and also producing alongside Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Anthony Bregman. No word yet on who Paxton will play, but he looks just like the type of father figure who can’t stand a lack of privacy in the digital age, and pretty much every other major role is already taken, so a wild guess says he’ll be Mae’s sickly and morally righteous dad.