David McCullough's story of John Adams is coming to TV. FILE/THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Life is like a 230-year-old box of chocolates: Tom Hanks, David McCullough and Virginia team up to tell John Adams' story in HBO miniseries

Date published: 7/26/2005

By MICHAEL ZITZ

So Tom Hanks has purchased the rights to do an 11-part miniseries for HBO based on the best-selling 2001 David McCullough book "John Adams" --and he'll film it in Virginia.

Does that mean the same man who spent so much time at the White House in "Forrest Gump" will play our second president?

Hanks, who is directly descended from Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, certainly has the breeding to play a chief executive.

A great-great-great nephew of Lincoln would might seem better suited to play Adams than Gump. But Carter Hudgins, a history professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, will be hearing the Gump line "Life is like a box of chocolates" in his head if Hanks stars in "John Adams."

"The trouble with casting actors as well-known as Hanks is it's difficult to separate them from past characters they've played," Hudgins said.

And what are the chances that the Fredericksburg area might be a location for the miniseries? Could historic houses such as Fredericksburg's Kenmore and Orange County's Montpelier become locations for shooting?

The selection of locations "is at a very preliminary stage," said Mary Nelson, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Film Office in Richmond.

All that is known now is that much of the filming will be done in Colonial Williamsburg and on the campus of The College of William & Mary.

It will be the largest film project ever for the state, with an estimated economic impact of $60 million. Filming will start in the fall and continue through next April.

Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who met with Hanks in March, said in a statement, "This miniseries will help secure Virginia's reputation as a premier location for American historical film projects."

The Old Dominion beat out Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, Adams' birth state, for filming honors.

Hudgins said McCullough's "John Adams," which won the Pulitzer Prize and became a best-seller, "reinvented the art of biography of figures from our early national period."

He said the four-year-old book has "stood the test of time" in terms of interesting a mainstream audience in history.

Date published: 7/26/2005