Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks's films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America.
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, a literary journal, a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines.
Tom Tykwer is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), and The International (2009). He collaborated with The Wachowskis as co-director for the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012) and the Netflix series Sense8 (2015–2018), and worked on the score for Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections (2021). Tykwer is also well known as the co-creator of the internationally acclaimed German television series Babylon Berlin.
Arthur Phillips is an American novelist. His books include Prague (2002), The Egyptologist (2004), Angelica (2007), The Song Is You (2009), The Tragedy of Arthur (2011), and The King at the Edge of the World (2020).
Cosmopolis is Don DeLillo's thirteenth novel. It was published by Scribner on April 14, 2003.
Michiko Kakutani is an American literary critic and former chief book critic for The New York Times. Her awards include a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury is an English actress, known for her role as Mina in the Mira Nair-directed feature film Mississippi Masala (1991). Choudhury has played roles in American and international films and television shows such as in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), A Perfect Murder (1998), 3 A.M. (2001), and the John Cassavetes remake Gloria (1999). In 2002, she starred in Just a Kiss. She played a lesbian virgin in Spike Lee's She Hate Me (2004) and acted as Anna Ran in Lady in the Water, a 2006 thriller by M. Night Shyamalan. She also played Egeria in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015) and co-starred with Tom Hanks in the 2016 film A Hologram for the King. In 2021, Choudhury joined the cast of HBO Max's Sex and the City revival television series And Just Like That….
The Godfather Returns is a novel written by author Mark Winegardner, published in 2004. It is the sequel to Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and The Sicilian (1984). The publisher, Random House, selected Winegardner to write a sequel after Puzo's death. As the original novel covered the years 1945 to 1955, and included significant backstory on Don Vito Corleone's life, Returns covers the years 1955 to 1962, and includes significant backstory on Michael Corleone's life prior to the first novel. It is the third book in The Godfather series of novels.
The Risk Pool is Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Russo's second novel. First published in 1988, The Risk Pool is a Bildungsroman or "coming of age" novel set in fictional Mohawk, New York, a dying blue-collar town. The Risk Pool was well received by critics, such as The New York Times, which called it a "superbly original, maliciously funny book" and praised Russo's "brilliant, deadpan writing." In 2004, Warner Bros. Pictures was reported to be developing a movie based on the book, with Tom Hanks starring as Ned Hall's father and Lawrence Kasdan writing the script and directing.
Waking the Dead is a 1986 novel by Scott Spencer. The book, Spencer's fourth, was adapted in 2000 into a film of the same name, starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly.
Cloud Atlas is a 2012 epic science fiction film written and directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. Based on the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, it has multiple plots occurring during six eras in time, with the cast members performing multiple roles.
James Adam Ponsoldt is an American film director, actor and screenwriter. He directed the drama films Off the Black (2006) and Smashed (2012), the romantic comedy-drama The Spectacular Now (2013), and the dramas The End of the Tour (2015) and The Circle (2017).
Kevin Powers is an American fiction writer, poet, and Iraq War veteran.
The Circle is a 2013 dystopian novel written by American author Dave Eggers. The novel chronicles tech worker Mae Holland as she joins a powerful Internet company. Her initially rewarding experience turns darker.
Jessica Nicole Hische is an American lettering artist, illustrator, author, and type designer. She was one of the first of a new generation of letterers and the present-day flourishing of the lettering arts can in part be traced back to her emergence.
A Hologram for the King is a 2016 comedy-drama film written, directed and co-scored by Tom Tykwer, based on the 2012 novel of the same name written by Dave Eggers, and starring Tom Hanks as a washed-up corporate salesman, who goes to Saudi Arabia to propose a business deal.
The Circle is a 2017 American techno-thriller film directed by James Ponsoldt with a screenplay by Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers, based on Eggers' 2013 novel of the same name. The film stars Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, as well as John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, and Bill Paxton. This would mark a posthumous release for Paxton, who died in February 2017, and would also be the final film of Headly's released before her death in June 2017.
Amira El Sayed is an Egyptian-Austrian actress and author based in Berlin, Germany.
Omar Elba formerly Alexander Black; is an Egyptian-born American actor, best known for co-starring alongside Tom Hanks in the 2016 movie A Hologram for the King. He also had a recurring role as Mark Green in the Limetown television series.
Moonglow is a 2016 novel by Michael Chabon. The book chronicles the life of Chabon's grandfather, a WW2 soldier, engineer and rocket enthusiast who marries a troubled Jewish survivor from France and lives a challenging, wandering life in postwar America. Chabon tells the story using a mixture of strict memoir and creative fiction writing. The narrator functions as a proxy for the author, Chabon.
