News of the World, due out on December 25, is based on the 2016 novel by Paulette Jiles, but there is an undeniable vibe of The Searchers about it, the 1956 John Ford film set during the Texas Indian Wars, in which John Wayne tries to “rescue” Natalie Wood from a Comanche tribe that has actually welcomed and cared for her.
Greengrass considers the movie, which takes place in 1870 in a region reeling from endless conflict, as a kind of allegory. “Even though it’s set then, it’s a film about our times,” he said. “Neighbors and families and communities were in stark and often violent conflict with each other, and Americans needed to decide who they were as Americans.”
The director previously worked with Hanks on 2013’s Captain Phillips, and said he joined the project after appearing as a narrator in the Netflix documentary Five Came Back, based on Mark Harris’s 2014 book about the work of iconic Hollywood filmmakers during World War II. “I told the story of John Ford, and obviously I revere what he does as the great master of the Western,” Greengrass said. “So the Western as a genre and he in particular were very much in my mind, because he told the story of America, didn’t he? The mythic story of America.”