On the heels of Mister Rogers‘ 51st anniversary, Sony Pictures has shared a picture of Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.
Sony announced the Fred Rogers movie, You are My Friend, in January, and it’s scheduled to come out in October 2019.
The film will not be a biopic, director Marielle Heller told Entertainment Weekly “I disliked that when it got announced it was characterized as such. It’s really not,” she said. “It’s a movie that’s largely focused on a reporter and [Mr. Rogers’] relationship to his life, and how [the reporter’s] whole world changes when coming in contact with Fred Rogers.”
The movie is based on the relationship between Mister Rogers and Tom Junod, who profiled the Mister Rogers for Esquire magazine in 1998.
In the same interview with Entertainment Weekly, Heller said that the movie’s “a story for our times, a story about kindness and family connection and trying to tap into our better self. God knows we need that right now.”