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Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are set to produce a John F. Kennedy assassination drama under their Playtone banner called Parkland. The films writer Peter Landesman, is also set to direct the film, and it would be his feature film debut.
The story chronicles the events leading up to JFK's assassination and Abraham Zapruder's famous documentation of the event. The title of the film refers to Parkland Memorial Hospital, which is where the President was rushed after he was shot and later pronounced dead on November 22nd, 1963. Two days later his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, died at the same hospital. Several years later, Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby, died there as well. Kind of crazy if you think about it.
According to Variety Parkland "will be an ensemble film that explores the impact the assassination had on a wide range of characters in and around Dallas on that fateful day, including an FBI agent, a young doctor, a reporter, several Secret Service agents, Kennedy's staff, Oswald's older brother, Jackie Kennedy and Zapruder." Much like Emilio Estevez's 2006 drama Bobby.
I don't know much about Landesman, but the report points out that he worked with Hanks and Goetzman on a script based on FBI agent Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat) for Universal Pictures. He also wrote a hostage drama called The Mission for Warner Bros. as well as an adaptation for Ross Macdonald's The Galton Case.
What do you think about this film project?
