Well, the guy who shot to fame in Bosom Buddies is heading back to his comic roots thanks to those ever-quirky Coen brothers, according to Daily Variety.
Director Joel and writer-producer Ethan Coen are eyeing Hanks for the lead in The Ladykillers, their modern retelling of the classic 1955 comedy from Britain's legendary Ealing Studios that starred Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.
Ladykillers would feature Hanks as a bumbling crook whose gang of ne'er-do-wells decides to hide out in apartment, posing as a band of musicians, while they plan their next heist. When their crochety landlady threatens to spoil their plans, the bad guys decide to off her, but get more than they bargained for when she proves near impossible to kill.
It would mark the first collaboration between Hanks and the Coens.
The Coens' update will reportedly transplant the setting from London to the deep South--something the brothers are well acquainted after 2000's country-bumpkin odyssey O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Ladykillers would be a welcome change of pace for Hanks. After early hits like Splash! and Big, Hanks spent the better part of a decade showing off his thespian chops in a drama-heavy slate of films (see: Philadelphia, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, Cast Away, Road to Perdition). Not counting his voiceover work in 1999's Toy Story 2, Hanks' last official comedy (if you want to call it that) was 1998's You've Got Mail.
But that's all about to change. He next plays an FBI agent opposite Leonardo DiCaprio's savvy con man in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, a film described as an action-comedy. It's due out this Christmas from DreamWorks.
Then the two-time Oscar winner will climb aboard the Warner Bros.-Universal CGI kiddie fantasy Polar Express, about a magical train that takes a young boy to the North Pole. Hanks will play the conductor and coproduce the movie, which will be helmed by his good pal Robert Zemeckis, who previously directed Hanks in Forrest Gump and Cast Away.
Polar Express is scheduled to start shooting in February 2003, after which the actor will likely segue into Touchstone's Ladykillers. The latter will begin production once the Coens finish work on another black comedy, Intolerable Cruelty, starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
And then after that, its back to serious business. On Hanks' packed calendar after Ladykillers is the DreamWorks' drama Terminal, about a Balkans immigrant who's forced to take shelter permanently in an airport lounge after he encounters visa problems because of the war in his homeland.