Who knew Tom Hanks was such an aviation buff? The Academy Award-winning actor, who is set to play Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger on the big screen in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming biopic about the 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson” ditching, will also be busy producing an HBO miniseries based on the new David McCullough book “The Wright Brothers,” telling the complete history of Orville and Wilbur from Dayton to Kitty Hawk and beyond.
HBO has adapted two of McCullough’s works in the past, producing the critically acclaimed “John Adams” and “Truman” miniseries. “The Wright Brothers” looks like another sure-fire hit, following the Wrights from their early days in Ohio as newspaper publishers to bicycle makers to airplane builders and finally to reluctant celebrities. Like all of his historical works, McCullough’s book brings the lives of Orville and Wilbur into sharp focus with writing that is cinematic in scope and approach.
Hanks, meanwhile, has also teamed up with Steven Spielberg on another HBO miniseries project, “Masters of the Air,” which will tell the harrowing true tales of the famed U.S. Eighth Air Force in World War II.
Maybe more than a lover of aviation, Hanks just likes telling a good story. There’s no question the tale of the Wright Brothers is a great one. And in the hands of Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian McCullough, it’s a story ripe to become another riveting miniseries on HBO.
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