Making a concerted bid for, like, all the Oscars, Warner Bros. and Paramount have stepped up plans to adapt Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock reportedly close to signing on. For those who missed it, Extremely Loud was one of the most buzzed-about novels to debut in 2005, owing to a post-9/11 narrative that was tied—exploitatively, some critics have argued—into the tale of a 9-year-old boy trying to solve the mystery of an unexplained key his father left behind when he died in the World Trade Center. In short, this is a project that’s got a precocious kid, built-in sentimentality, and quite possibly two of America’s favorite actors (albeit in roles that leave a lot to be desired dramatically, and will probably be changed slightly for the big screen). It’s also got writer Eric Roth, who’s proven adept at condensing American history into warm-and-fuzzy glurge with Forrest Gump and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, a similarly Oscar-friendly heavy hand in director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, The Reader), and even a touch of the Holocaust with its Dresden flashbacks. It’s a shame they can’t find a way to work an inner-city black teenager into this, but something tells us it’ll still do okay.
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