Natalie Portman to Join Tom Hanks in THE GARDEN OF BEASTS?

Last year it was reported that Tom Hanks and his producing partner Gary Goetsman would be adapting the Erik Larson novel, In the Garden of the Beasts, for the big screen. Hanks would take on the lead role in the film, and now there's a new report from Deadline saying that The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius is currently in talks to helm, and Natalie Portman could end up playing Hanks' daughter in the story.

The film is set during Hitler’s rise to power. It's based on the true story of William Dodd, "the United States' reluctant and mild-mannered ambassador to Berlin in 1933, and his daughter Martha, a vivacious socialite who had romantic affairs with a Gestapo official and a Soviet spy. Dodd and his family at first naively navigated life in Nazi Germany (Dodd’s daughter was excited when Hitler kissed her hand) but they slowly gained awareness of the mounting brutality around them."

Hanks and Portman are perfect for this film, and it would be great to see these two talents working together on such an intriguing story. What do you think about Hanks and Portman teaming up for a movie like this?

Here's the description from the book:

With this new book, I invite you to journey to Berlin during Hitler’s first year in power, 1933, in the company of a real-life father and daughter from Chicago who suddenly found themselves transported to the heart of the city. They had no conception of the harrowing days that lay ahead. At the time, nothing was certain—Hitler did not yet possess absolute power, and few outsiders expected his government to survive. The family encountered a city suffused with energy and optimism, with some of the most striking, avant-garde buildings in the world. Its theaters, concert halls, and cafés were jammed; the streets teemed with well-dressed attractive people. But my two protagonists were about to begin an education that would change them forever, with ultimately tragic consequences.

The father was William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered professor who, much to his surprise and everyone else’s, was picked by President Roosevelt to be America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany. His daughter, Martha, was 24 years old, and chose to come along for the adventure, and to escape a dead marriage to a New York banker. They and the rest of their family settled in a grand old house on the city’s central park, the Tiergarten—in literal translation, the Garden of Beasts.

Dodd expected to encounter the same warm citizenry he had known three decades earlier while a graduate student in Leipzig; he hoped to use reason and quiet persuasion to temper Hitler’s government. Martha found the “New Germany” utterly enthralling, totally unlike the horrific realm depicted in newspapers back home. For her, as for many other foreign visitors at the time, the transformation of Germany was thrilling and not at all frightening. Not yet.

As that first year unfolded they experienced days full of energy, intrigue, and romance—and, ultimately, terror, on a scale they could never have imagined. Their experience tells volumes about why the world took so long to recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler.