EXCLUSIVE: John Boyega is certainly working with role-model leading men. Boyega, who catapulted from the indie gem Attack The Block to the lead role of Finn in the JJ Abrams-directed film Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, has been tapped to star opposite Tom Hanks and Emma Watson in the James Ponsoldt-directed and scripted adaptation of Dave Eggers’ book The Circle. So he moves from sharing the stage with Harrison Ford, to doing the same with Hanks.

In The Circle, Boyega will play Ty, the iconized boy-wonder visionary of the Circle, an Internet monopoly which links users’ personal emails, social media, banking and purchasing with their universal operating system. The result is one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. He and an employee (Watson) develop a relationship as the perils of life in a digital age inevitably arise.

The film is produced by Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone, along with Anthony Bregman’s Likely Story and Ponsoldt, and Walter Parkes and Laurie Macdonald of Parkes + MacDonald Image Nation. Image Nation Abu Dhabi is fully financing. IM Global is handling international sales on the film and U.S. rights are being jointly repped by UTA Independent Film Group and CAA.

Boyega is repped by WME, UK agent Femi Oguns of Identity Agency Group, and Hansen, Jacobson.