Willem Dafoe, Jonathan Bailey and Peter Dinklage Join Starburns' Animated 'Lincoln in the Bardo' Opposite Tom Hanks
Willem Dafoe, Jonathan Bailey and Peter Dinklage have joined the voice cast of Lincoln in the Bardo, the stop-motion and live-action adaptation of George Saunders' 2017 Booker Prize-winning novel, with Tom Hanks already set as Abraham Lincoln in the film's live-action scenes. Deadline reported the cast additions on 28 August 2026.
The film centres on Lincoln's relationship with his recently deceased 11-year-old son. In Saunders' novel, the "bardo" is a Tibetan Buddhist concept for a liminal state between death and the next life, and the story unfolds inside a graveyard where ghosts linger, unable or unwilling to move on. Saunders adapted his own novel for the screen.
Duke Johnson directs. Johnson is best known for co-directing the stop-motion feature Anomalisa with Charlie Kaufman. Here he blends two formats: hand-crafted animation for the ghost world and live-action for Lincoln's scenes, with Hanks carrying the latter.
Each of the three new voice actors plays a ghost with a specific unfinished attachment to the living world. Dafoe voices Reverend Everly Thomas, a minister who died believing he would go to heaven. Bailey voices Roger Bevins, a young gay man who took his own life over a failed love affair. Dinklage voices Hans Vollman, a ghost obsessed with reuniting with his much-younger wife.
All three actors arrive with substantial credentials. Dafoe is a four-time Academy Award nominee whose credits span Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire, The Florida Project, At Eternity's Gate and animation work on Finding Nemo, Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Boy and the Heron. Bailey's credits include the Wicked franchise, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Fellow Travelers and Bridgerton. Dinklage is known for Game of Thrones, Cyrano, Wicker and Roofman.
The production pairs two companies. Starburns Industries, the animation studio behind Anomalisa, produces through Johnson, Paul Young and Devon Young Rabinowitz. Hanks and Gary Goetzman produce through their Playtone banner. Steven Shareshian, Aaron Mitchell and George Saunders serve as executive producers.
CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are handling sales at TIFF: The Market, the industry marketplace running alongside the Toronto International Film Festival. For context, a film market is where distributors and financiers buy rights to films before they reach cinemas; landing sales representation at TIFF signals that the project will be pitched to buyers this autumn.
No release date or distributor has been announced. The film will head to market at Toronto with its principal cast in place.
(Deadline)
