Way back on the first of April when news broke that Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry had signed on to bring Jonathan Safran Foer’s celebrated Post 9-11 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to the big screen the main question mark on my mind was the casting of the novel’s central character, nine year old Oskar Schell.
Today THR have the news that the role has gone to a young unknown named Thomas Horn, who will take to the screen with the not inconsiderable talent of Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. The novel centres on Oskar’s discovery of a key in his late father’s belongings which sets him on a journey to find out all he can about his father and New York in the shadow of the terrorist attacks.
I was a huge fan of the book, and of Oskar himself and Daldry will have to coax a fantastically compelling performance from the young actor if they are to do justice to the character and the novel.
