Actress Natalie Portman. Photo: wiki commons.

Natalie Portman is being courted to star alongside Tom Hanks in a new movie about World War II, which Hanks will also produce.

The film, ‘In the Garden of Beasts’, is based on a book by Erik Larson, who wrote Devil in the White City.  According to Slashfilm, casting has just recently gotten underway, as Hanks has been tied up with other projects, and Portman is a favorite to play the protagonist’s daughter.

Hanks is set to play a professor named William E. Dodd, who becomes the U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 1933.  After moving to Europe, his daughter (the role Portman would play) becomes involved with a number of Third Reich men while Dodd begins to uncover the scope of Hitler’s plans for war and mass genocide.