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Tom Hanks’ début novel scooped by Hutchinson Heinemann
Hutchinson Heinemann has landed Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks’ début novel.
UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada to The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece were acquired by publishing director Ailah Ahmed from vice president and director of foreign rights at Knopf, Suzanne Smith. Hutchinson Heinemann will publish alongside Knopf, an imprint of Random House US, in hardback, e-book and audio on 9th May 2023.
The publisher describes the novel as “a wildly ambitious story of the making of a colossal, star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film, and the humble comic book that inspired it all”.
It continues: “Spanning 80 years of a changing America and culminating in the opening of the film, we meet a colourful cast of characters including a troubled soldier returning from war, a young boy with an artistic gift, an inspired and eccentric director, a pompous film star on the rise, a tireless production assistant and countless film crew members that together create Hollywood magic.”
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece follows Hanks’ Sunday Times bestselling short story collection Uncommon Type.
Hanks said: “No one knows how a movie is made – though everyone thinks they do. I’ve made a ton of movies (and four of them are pretty good, I think) and I’m still amazed at how films come together. From a flicker of an idea to the flickering image on screen, the whole process is a miracle.
“How long does it take for a movie to get made? Eighteen months? Eighty years? Yes. How many minds are involved in getting a movie made? Just one? One hundred and ninety-seven? Yep. What is the difference between making a ‘good’ movie and making a ‘quite good’ movie? Any professional who claims to know is not a professional.
“Movie making is very hard work over a very long period of time that consists of so many moments of joy slapped up against an equal number of feelings of self-loathing. It is the greatest job in the world and the most confounding of labours that I know of. I hope the book captures as much of ‘the accidental judgements and casual slaughter’ that go into a motion pictures dictum to hold ‘a mirror up to nature’ that I have witnessed (and caused) since I joined the Screen Actors Guild.”
Ailah Ahmed, publishing director at Hutchinson Heinemann, commented: “Being able to publish Tom Hanks’ début novel is a publisher’s dream come true. The fact that he has written an epic about ordinary people in a rather extraordinary world, and one that is thoughtful, poignant and hugely entertaining is icing on the cake. Readers, get ready to fall in love with it.”
