Plot Details Emerge About Tom Hanks’s Mr. Rogers Movie — It’s Not A Biopic

The director of You Are My Friend, the movie about Mr. Rogers, who will be played by Tom Hanks, has released a bit of information about the plot.

“[This] movie is…. not a biopic,” Marielle Heller said to Entertainment Weekly. “I disliked that when it got announced it was characterized as such. It’s really not. It’s a movie that’s largely focused on a reporter and [Mr. Rogers’] relationship to his life, and how [the reporter’s] whole world changes when coming in contact with Fred Rogers.”

The story follows the life of Tom Junod, who forged an emotional bond with the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood star while profiling him for Esquire magazine in 1998.

“It’s a story for our times, a story about kindness and family connection and trying to tap into our better self. God knows we need that right now!” Marielle added. “In the research for the movie, the writers found that more people than they could possibly count credited Mr. Rogers with changing their lives…. [It’s about] one man who’s in a critical point in his life — becoming a new father, having issues with his own father — and meeting Mr. Rogers to write a piece about him, thinking it’s going to be a bit of a puff piece, but it ends up changing his entire life.”

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