Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are to star in a new Steven Spielberg film based on the true story of the Pentagon Papers scandal in 1971.

Titled The Post, the film will tell the story of Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham, two Washington Post workers who fought to publish revelations on the Vietnam war.

Hanks is set to play Bradlee while Streep will play Graham.

The Pentagon Papers was the name of a classified study which revealed unreported facts about a secret escalation of more than 500,000 troops by 1968.

Image: Ben Bradlee was executive editor of The Washington Post during the Nixon administration

The papers were leaked by a military analyst to the New York Times and later shared with The Washington Post, after the federal government tried to block their publication.


Several years later, Bradlee would oversee coverage of the Watergate scandal which forced US president Richard Nixon to resign.

The Post script has been penned by writer Liz Hannah, who said the project was "without exaggeration, a dream come true".

Image: Novelist Truman Capote with Katherine Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post

The timely film has been announced just weeks after Donald Trump revoked The Washington Post's credentials, accusing the paper of being "phony, dishonest and incredibly inaccurate".

The Post's executive editor Marty Baron called it "nothing less than the repudiation of the role of a free and independent press".

Both Hanks and Streep have been vocal critics of the Trump administration, with the actress criticising the President for mocking a disabled reporter and Hanks sending an espresso machine to the White House press corps.

In a recent interview with the Post, Bradlee's widow Sally Quinn said she was "thrilled" the movie was being made, and that "the timing was perfect".

"It could not be more relevant today to what's going on," she said.

It comes at a busy time for Spielberg, who is also working on The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, starring Mark Rylance and Oscar Isaac, and is in post-production for his next film, Ready Player One.

This will be Hanks' fifth collaboration with the director, and Streep's first.