Bill O’Reilly, Tom Hanks Team Up for ‘Killing Lincoln’

Hollywood star Tom Hanks and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly seem like an unlikely pair to work together on anything, but both men are associated with the National Geographic Channel’s new film “Killing Lincoln.”

Salon:

The channel, better-known for nature documentaries, will debut “Killing Lincoln” next month, and has released a trailer; it’s a close-up of what happens after the bulk of Steven Spielberg’s recent biopic “Lincoln,” and is based on O’Reilly’s account of the 1865 assassination. Tom Hanks, who is both a longtime producer of acclaimed historical films for highbrow HBO and a cousin of Abraham Lincoln through his mother, serves as narrator.

Hanks, whose produced work includes HBO’s “John Adams” miniseries and “The Pacific,” lends a sheen of legitimacy to the project. After all, “Killing Lincoln” is the adaptation of a book that contained factual inaccuracies, as Salon and other historians reported. Not that it’s hurt sales of the book (both”Killing Lincoln” and its follow-up “Killing Kennedy” are New York Times best-sellers) or is likely to hurt viewership of the movie.

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Billy Campbell stars in the movie as Abraham Lincoln, while Jesse Johnson plays John Wilkes Booth.

Watch the trailer on Entertaiment Weekly’s website here.

— Posted by Tracy Bloom.