The Hollywood star, 64, debuts as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a widower and veteran of three wars, who now works as a traveling non-fiction storyteller.
While in Texas he comes across Johanna, played by Helena Zengel, a 10-year-old taken in by the Native American Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own.
Johanna, hostile to a world she’s never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will, and Kidd agrees to chaperone her on this journey.
News Of The World reunites Hanks with writer and director Paul Greengrass after the pair worked together on the Oscar-nominated 2013 film Captain Phillips.
The screenplay was co-written with Lion’s Luke Davies and based on the best-selling novel by Paulette Jiles.
Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson were among the first celebrities to contract coronavirus in March while they were in Australia.
He subsequently told NBC’s Today programme he felt “rotten” while he had the virus and he has spoken out in favour of people wearing masks and adhering to social distancing rules.
