Sony Pictures will release Tom Hanks’ “The Comebacker,” a feature film directed by Hanks’ collaborator Marielle Heller (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” ) on July 30, 2027, the studio announced Wednesday.
Heller’s new feature was subject to a heated bidding war with Republic Pictures, Focus Features and Sony. And a fun fact, Sony’s “A League of Their Own” starring Tom Hanks came out in July 1992.
The baseball comedy follows an older beat reporter whose love of the game, the team he covers and his profession is reignited by the arrival of a new pitcher. The film was adapted from the short story by Pulitzer Prize finalist Dave Eggers.
Sony released “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which earned Hanks a 2019 Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, as well as the star’s 2022 drama “A Man Called Otto.”
“The Comebacker” will be produced by Hanks’ partner Gary Goetzman through Playtone and Heller’s producing partner Leah Holzer through their Defiant by Nature banner, in cooperation with Major League Baseball. Super Bowl halftime show performer Bad Bunny and Oscar nominee Colman Domingo are also eyeing roles in the feature.
This marks the third time Hanks has starred in an adaptation of Eggers’ work, having previously appeared in Tom Tykwer’s “A Hologram for the King” in 2016 and James Ponsoldt’s “The Circle” in 2017, in which Hanks played a villainous tech mogul opposite Emma Watson.
The official synopsis for the short story, part of a series from Eggers called “The Forgetters,” reads: “Lionel Vratimos is a beat reporter covering the San Francisco Giants ― an enviable job if not for the soggy fries, and the so-so weather, and the Giants’ losing record, and the shoe Lionel paid a Romanian shoemaker to re-sole but which now squeaks with every footfall. His colleagues are even more dissatisfied, mired in statistics and myopia and complaints about a certain elevator that is really too slow. One day, though, a new pitcher, Nathan Couture, is brought up from the minor leagues; he’s tall and lanky and talks like no one they’ve ever covered. Even more startling is Nathan’s actual interest in the words Lionel writes, and his rare, even unprecedented, ability to see the beauty in the game he’s paid to play.”
