After ‘Captain Phillips,’ Tom Hanks takes on ‘A Hologram for the King’

In “Captain Phillips,” Tom Hanks stars in a parable about the brutal uncertainty of the global economy, where an American cargo ship captain and a Somali pirate are portrayed as men trying to make a living in an increasingly dangerous and desperate world.

The anxiety of the modern economy must be a resonant theme for Hanks -- he plans to tackle it again in “A Hologram for the King,” a film he’s scheduled to start production on next year with director Tom Tykwer.

“There’s a screenplay,” Hanks said, when asked about his future projects during a recent interview to promote “Captain Phillips.” “Tom [Tywker] wants to make it. And that’s the only thing that is even remotely close to being a movie that’ll be made.”

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Tykwer, who shared directing credit with Andy and Lana Wachowski in Hanks’ 2012 film “Cloud Atlas,” adapted the script for “A Hologram for the King” from Dave Eggers’ 2012 National Book Award-nominated novel of the same title.

The novel, which the New York Times called “a kind of ‘Death of a Globalized Salesman,’” centers on Alan Clay, a struggling American consultant on a business trip in Saudi Arabia, where he hopes to close a deal to help him stave off foreclosure and pay his daughter’s college tuition.

Hanks, whose Playtone production company is aboard to produce, will play Clay, a reprise of sorts of the unlucky everyman roles that he wears so well, from the hard-drinking baseball manager in “A League of Their Own” to the stranded FedEx employee in “Cast Away” to his current role as seaman Richard Phillips in “Captain Phillips.”

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Hanks, 57, who will also play Walt Disney during the making of “Mary Poppins” in the upcoming movie “Saving Mr. Banks,” has given a lot of thought to the fears and frustrations of a middle-aged man in the modern economy.

“It is that concept of, we’re getting older and this is getting a little bit harder,” Hanks said. “The pressures, oddly, have grown. Even though we have more experience, it’s actually harder to do this job now.”

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