MUMBAI: Tom Hanks’ production company and HBO have bought the broadcasting rights for the bestselling book by journalist Beth Macy ‘Factory Man’ and is planning to develop the story into a miniseries.

Actor Tom Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman plan to co-produce the project through their production company, Playtone, with Steven Shareshian serving as co-executive producer and Peter McGuigan as co-producer. The cast of the miniseries have not been decided yet.

The book follows and chronicles the story of the Basset family in Virginia, who have been running The Basset Furniture Company since the early 1900s and became the world’s largest wood furniture manufacturer. However, in the ’80s, Asian countries and businesses boomed, placing the long-running furniture company in competition with its Asian counterparts. In order to keep up to the times and the demand in furniture at that time, the family was forced to outsource its labour and production overseas which meant that a lot of local Virginians lost their jobs in the process. This changed when John Basset III decided to take a stand and bring back the factory’s production to Virginia. The company currently has more than 700 Virginians working for the Vaughn-Basset Furniture Co. and has sales that total more than $90 million.

This news comes after Hanks’ review of the book on twitter on 24 July, “Great summer reading. I give it 42 stars. No, I give it 142 stars. Yeah, it’s THAT good. Hanx.”

Playtone is currently producing a miniseries based on Elizabeth Strout’s bestselling book Olive Kitteridge, starring Oscar-winner Frances McDormand. Playtone has also produced such Emmy-award winning hits like Band of Brothers, The Pacific and John Adams.