A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood: Tom Hanks as Mr Rogers

Who is Fred Rogers? What is this one 'neighborhood' everyone seems so familiar with? These questions may seem redundant to a North American cohort, as Mister Rogers was a children's entertainer that lit up TV screens around the country for years.

He was a simple man with a simple mission: 'We are trying to give the world positive ways of dealing with their feelings'. These words are spoken by Tom Hanks, playing the beloved man in Marielle Heller's upcoming biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

The film is based on the process of one journalist tasked with profiling Mr Rogers, namely Tom Junod who went on to write the Esquire article 'Can You Say...Hero?' about his encounter, which, Junod said, changed his life.

In the film, Junod is renamed Lloyd Vogel and is played by Matthew Rhys. He stars opposite Hanks as the lovable Mr Rogers, who seems to be channelling a similar energy to his performance in Saving Mr Banks when he took on the role of Mr Walt Disney himself. Following the 2018 documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, this new film will add another layer of education and empathy for a worldwide audience to learn from Mr Rogers' ways.

It's also an exciting time to welcome a new film directed by Marielle Heller, following the triumphs of her first two films The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?. The filmmaker has a simultaneously sharp and tender understanding of outsiders, her movies existing as portraits of flawed but deeply loving people.

With A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood it feels like all our Christmases are truly coming at once – convenient, then, that we can look forward to a wide cinema release on 6 December. A perfect trip to the movies for the whole family.