Was ''Road to Perdition'' really the start of an image shift for Tom Hanks? Sure, he played a gunman, but a nice, fatherly gunman. In one of his next movies, however, he'll play a thug who tries to kill an old lady. Variety reports that he'll star in the Coen brothers' remake of ''The Ladykillers,'' the 1955 black-comic classic that starred Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.
Though the original took place in England, the Coens will set their version in the American South, somewhere near the territory of their crime capers ''Raising Arizona'' and ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' Hanks, who won an Emmy this weekend for directing part of HBO's ''Band of Brothers,'' will play the leader of a gang of thieves who try to dispose of their hideout's landlady, only to find she has more lives than the Terminator.
First, however, Hanks will revert to nice-guy mode to star as a train conductor in ''Polar Express,'' a kids' movie about a railroad that leads to Santa's workshop. Hanks has been trying to adapt Chris Van Allsburg's (''Jumanji'') story for years, and now, Variety reports, the film will start production in February. The project will reunite Hanks with ''Cast Away'' director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter William Broyles. It should be in theaters at Christmas 2004.
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