Four voices for Streep
Starburns Industries announced on September 3 that Meryl Streep, Colman Domingo, Bill Hader and Tom Waits have joined the film. Johnson is directing from a screenplay adapted by Saunders from his own 2017 Booker Prize-winning novel.
Streep will voice Abigail Blass, the impoverished widow who remains in the bardo after death, and Elizabeth Crawford. She will also play an Angel trying to draw lost souls away from the cemetery and a Demon attempting to keep Willie Lincoln trapped there.
Bill Hader has two parts: Eddie Baron and one of the Three Rakes. Tom Waits will voice Jaspar Randall, a former dancehall performer who has spent so long in the bardo that he has been reduced to something resembling a singing mark on the ground, as well as one of the Demons pursuing Willie.
Colman Domingo plays Thomas Havens, the ghost of a formerly enslaved man whose story intersects directly with President Lincoln.
The casting matches Saunders' chorus of ghosts
That concentration of roles makes sense for this particular adaptation. Saunders built Lincoln in the Bardo around an enormous chorus rather than a conventional sequence of neatly separated protagonists. Historical voices, invented figures and the dead interrupt and overlap one another while Abraham Lincoln mourns his 11-year-old son.
Johnson's film is carrying that division into the image itself. Tom Hanks will play Abraham Lincoln in live action, while the supernatural side of the story uses stop-motion animation.
Willem Dafoe, Jonathan Bailey and Peter Dinklage were previously announced for the voice cast. Dafoe is Rev. Everly Thomas, Bailey voices Hans Vollman and Dinklage plays Roger Bevins.
A hybrid movie with a very deliberate split
For Johnson, who co-directed Anomalisa, stop-motion is familiar territory. Lincoln in the Bardo gives the technique a different dramatic job: it can make the cemetery and its inhabitants feel physically distinct from the live-action Lincoln without reducing the ghosts to a conventional visual-effects layer around Hanks.
The producers describe the film as a story about grief, empathy and connection, centered on Lincoln's relationship with his recently deceased son Willie. The new casting offers a clearer sense of just how populated that strange transitional space will be.
Toronto is the next stop
The project is also heading toward the business side of the Toronto International Film Festival. CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are handling sales at TIFF: The Market.
Johnson, Paul Young and Devon Young Rabinowitz are producing through Starburns Industries, with Hanks and Gary Goetzman producing for Playtone. Steven Shareshian, Aaron Mitchell and Saunders serve as executive producers.
There is still no announced release date. What the film has now is a remarkably deep ensemble and a formal idea that already separates it from the usual prestige literary adaptation.
