Boy “Jeopardy!” Champ Starring in “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close”

Director Stephen Daldry's quest for a kid braniac has led him to former "Jeopardy!" winner Thomas Horn.

Horn will take the lead role opposite Sandra Bullock in "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close," reported Deadline. Horn, 12, first made headlines in October with his $31,800 payday during an appearance on "Jeopardy!"

The film is an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel about a precocious 9-year-old boy, Oskar, who discovers in an envelope marked "Black" a mysterious key left behind by his father, who was killed in the attacks on 9/11. Oskar becomes determined to find the lock that fits the key.

Here's this from the Publisher's Weekly review:

Oskar Schell... is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist... (Who) turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden. 

Daldry ("Billy Elliot," "The Hours") will be working with a script by Eric Roth, who's best known for "Forrest Gump" (which he re-wrote a decade later under the title "Benjamin Button").

Contact Us