Hitfix posts the first image from Oscar perennial Stephen Daldry’s film adaptation of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, showing a sweet moment between Manhattan father and son Tom Hanks and Thomas Horn, who later searches for messages from his father following the September 11th disaster. Recent Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock plays Horn’s mother.
Sight unseen, this movie is one of the front-runners for the Oscar, and is breaking at year’s end, Christmas, just before the other perceived leader of the pack, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. Neither of the films is expected to be finished soon enough to go to any festivals: Venice, Telluride and Toronto will sift through the long list of potential contenders. The survivors with the right stuff will go up against the mighty Spielberg and Daldry’s year-end question marks.
Daldry has been nominated for a Best Director Oscar for each of his three films: Billy Elliott, The Hours, and The Reader. Like the upcoming adaptation from Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, the latter two were also adapted from critically acclaimed books. The Scott Rudin-produced film, which also stars James Gandolfini and Viola Davis, will open limited at Christmas and expand nationally on January 20, 2012.
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