This will mark the first time Streep and Hanks have shared the screen. It’s also Streep’s first live-action movie directed by Spielberg, though she did voice the Blue Fairy in an “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” cameo. Hanks and Spielberg have met a time or two. (Those times include “Saving Private Ryan,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Band of Brothers,” “The Terminal” and “Bridge of Spies.”)

Titled “The Post” and based on a spec script by Liz Hannah, the movie chronicles the Washington Post’s early-1970s efforts to expose the Pentagon Papers, which unmasked the United States government’s deception about the scale of the Vietnam War. Streep has signed on to play WaPo publisher Kay Graham, and Hanks is on board as editor Ben Bradlee. Together, Graham and Bradlee battled the Nixon administration over their right to publish information from the documents.

Lending this project added timeliness, Streep and Hanks have been outspoken about media rights in the wake of Donald Trump’s consistent attacks on the press.

“We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we’re going to need them going forward. And they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.”

Hanks first donated an espresso machine to the White House press corps during George W. Bush’s administration, then replaced it while Barack Obama was in office. He gave the Washington journalists a new brewer last week, paired with a note that read, “Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Especially the Truth part.”

Here’s a photo of the actors on the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet in 2014 with Rita Wilson:

Kevin Winter via Getty Images