Tom Hanks Announces “Larry Crowne” Cast Via Twitpic

Not wanting to be part of Variety magazine's ridiculous power play, Tom Hanks did a 21st-Century end run around the Hollywood publicity machine, announcing the cast of his new film via TwitPic.

"Larry Crowne," the upcoming comedy about a middle-aged man forced to find a new career, that Hanks will star in, write and direct, was known to co-star Julia Roberts.

But over the weekend, followers of Hanks' twitter feed learned that Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Cedric the Entertainer, Rami Malek, George Takei, Dale Dye, Peter Scolari, Bryan Cranston, Wilmer Valderrama, Taraji P Henson, Jon Seda, Maria Canals Barrera and Holmes Osborne will also be in the film.

Hanks posted the photo on Saturday, just a day after it was learned that Variety had instituted a new policy whereby they refuse to run stories in the print edition that were fed to their comtetition first.

"We simply said that if you give any of these show business websites the story first, then we'll put the story on the Web -- for the record -- but we won't put it in the print edition," Variety Editor Tim Gray told the Los Angeles Times' Big Picture.

People with cellphones -- which is to say everybody -- will soon render the issue moot.

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