It’s Uncanny How Much Tom Hanks Looks Like Mister Rogers In ‘You Are My Friend’

With everything going on this day, this week, this month, this year, the world needs something good to happen. Right on cue: here’s the first-look image of five-time Oscar nominee Tom Hanks as beloved entertainer Fred Rogers, of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fame, in the upcoming film You Are My Friend.

It’s perfect casting: everyone loves Mister Rogers (even a documentary about the TV personality/good guy, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, was a legitimate box office hit), and everyone really, really, really, really, really, really loves Tom Hanks. Put them together and you’ve got “America’s Dad” in a dope sweater.

Directed by Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), You Are My Friend is inspired by “a real-life friendship between Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. The cynical journalist begrudgingly accepts an assignment to write a profile piece on the beloved TV icon Mr. Rogers and finds his perspective on life transformed.” It sounds like a biopic, but Heller balks at that term; instead, she calls the film 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!”

You Are My Friend is scheduled to come out in October 2019.