Tom Hanks’ Lincoln in the Bardo Adds Hollywood Stars

It started as a whisper among festival scouts and literary circles: George Saunders’ Booker-winning novel was headed to the screen. Now the whisper has a pulse. Tom Hanks will play Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln in the Bardo, and the project just picked up three striking additions to its voice cast—Willem Dafoe, Jonathan Bailey and Peter Dinklage.

Think of it as history haunted. The film blends live-action with stop-motion, a creative choice that promises to make grief feel tactile—grainy, strange, oddly intimate. Why mix techniques? Because Saunders’ book lives in liminal space: a president, a bereaved father, and a chorus of voices—some living, many dead—navigating loss. Translating that to film calls for inventiveness. The team behind this adaptation is betting on it.

Deadline first reported the casting scoop: Dafoe lends his voice to Orly Thomas, a clergyman who discovers, to his surprise, that he hasn’t landed in heaven. Jonathan Bailey voices Roger Boines, a young man whose remorse came too late. And Peter Dinklage embodies Hans Vollman, a spirit still reaching for the wife he misses. Each performer brings a distinct emotional register—rough edges, regret, longing—that suits the novel’s mosaic of sorrow and humor.

Tom Hanks appears in the live-action sequences as Lincoln himself, anchoring the story’s temporal and emotional center. The screenplay is an unusual one: George Saunders adapted his own novel. Directing is Duke Johnson, known for Anomalisa, the stop-motion feature that earned an Academy Award nomination. Production comes from Starburns Industries, with Duke Johnson producing alongside Hanks and Gary Goetzman through Playtone.

There’s industry talk, too. International sales will be handled at the Toronto market by CAA Media Finance and WME Independent—signals that the producers expect festival interest and a global audience. Release date? Still unannounced. Timing, for a story about mourning, seems almost deliberate.

Lincoln in the Bardo explores one of the sharpest personal tragedies in Lincoln’s life—his grief after the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie. It’s a story told through collisions: history and fantasy, the mundane and the metaphysical, living voices and the dead who refuse to be silent. The new cast suggests the filmmakers want to honor both the novel’s tenderness and its strange, comedic heart.

There’s a sense, watching this ensemble come together, that the film could be something you haven’t quite seen before—part elegy, part experiment. Stay tuned; the next reveal may be the trickiest one yet: when it will reach theaters, and whether it will reshape how literary adaptations can sound.