EXCLUSIVE: The Dodgers opening their season and trying for a three-peat today is not the only hot baseball game going on in Hollywood. Three studios are vying for The Comebacker, a film that will reteam Tom Hanks with Marielle Heller, who directed Hanks as Mr. Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Based on a short story by Dave Eggers, The Comebacker was scripted by Heller and is called a love letter to baseball. Sony and Focus are in the mix with one other.
Hanks plays the pitching coach of a major league hurler whose life is upended when he is hit in the head by a line drive on the mound. His life changes in all kinds of ways. There is no actor set yet to play the pitcher, but it sounds like every young leading man in town will be after this one. Production will begin in October, and the film is being produced by Hanks’ partner Gary Goetzman at Playtone, and Heller’s producing partner Leah Holzer at Defiant By Nature. Only one of the three bidding distributors will come away with the movie, and the other two must remember that there is no crying in baseball.
Hanks and Goetzman are just wrapping Greyhound 2 in Australia. Once again, Hanks wrote the script and stars, with Aaron Schneider directing for Apple Original Films. Unless the bargaining goes into extra innings, a deal should be closed by weekend.