It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks as Mr Rogers

Hitting theaters on November 22, 2019–just in time for Thanksgiving–A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is the Fred Rogers biopic starring Tom Hanks as the one, the only, the pure-as-can-be Mr Rogers.

The film focuses on the relationship between Rogers and Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a journalist writing a profile on the smiling star of Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood. The film would appear to be based on the Esquire piece by Tom Junod, written in the late-’90s.

With last year’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? being such an easy-watch as well as a great documentary (our own Jesse Lab was a big fan), it’s clear that yes, Mr Rogers makes as good of a subject as he does an entertainer. The popularity of last year’s documentary by Morgan Neville will no doubt inadvertently promote A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; I connected many of the images in the trailer here immediately to the real footage I saw in Neighbor, which is an incredibly satisfying thing, and sells the biopic as authentic.

With Hanks starring and Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) directing, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood should be a perfectly sweet, charming film for the Thanksgiving holiday later this year.