Stephen Daldry to direct Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock?

A few weeks ago, Sandra Bullock was seen leaving a meeting with Stephen Daldry with what looked like a script in her hands. Today it’s fairly certain that script was Eric Roth’s adaptation of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Variety says Bullock and Tom Hanks may be the director’s first choice to play the adult leads alongside a precocious kid facing a world of tragedy and post-traumatic stress just after the World Trade Center attack.

Warner Bros. and Paramount are eyeing Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks for the feature version of post- 9/11 drama “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” with Scott Rudin producing.

Warners, the lead studio on the project, indicated it has made offers to the thesps but is not yet in formal negotiations. And the studios have not yet greenlit the project. The Jonathan Safran Foer novel, set in 2003, centers on a 9-year-old boy who finds a key in a vase that belongs to his father — who perished in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — and searches to find the lock that goes with it. It was one of the first American novels to incorporate the Sept. 11 events into the plot.

You can read the first 15 pages of Foer’s novel here at bookbrowse.

As impressive as the names Hanks, Daldry and Bullock may be, it’s Scott Rudin’s involvement that really crowns this distinguished pedigree. Rudin’s recent Oscar projects include No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Julie & Julia, and Doubt. This year alone Rudin is shepherding The Social Network, True Grit and The Way Back. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close looks set to begin filming in January, putting it in the production pipeline with upcoming Rudin properties Moneyball and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In coming months we can expect to see some of the most distinguished filmmakers in their respective fields align behind the camera for what’s certain to be one of those movies that seem to assume frontrunner status before a single scene is shot.