Recently, I watched the movie News of the World by director Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks. It intrigued me as a story, and I looked into whether it was based on a true story. The film is actually an adaptation of the 2016 novel News of the World by Paulette Jiles. Upon further googling, I found out that the book's characters and events are loosely based on multiple other real people and their stories.
The first inspiration for it was the book The Captured, about the author, Scott Zesch's ancestor Adolph Korn. Korn was captured by Apaches when he was 10, and was traded to Comanches. He adapted to their lifestyle and trained fighting against US soldiers and settlers. He was forcibly returned to white society but never adapted back to it.
Another inspiration to the book was Kiowa Dutch. Jiles recalled how she would search for photographs of Comanche or Kiowa captives. One photo she found was of Kiowa Dutch "a mysterious person who was clearly Caucasian but had been raised Kiowa and had no knowledge of his original name or birthplace of provenance." Both Kiowa Dutch and Adolph Korn obviously influenced the 10-year-old girl, played by Helena Zengel, who Captain Kidd, played by Tom Hanks, escorts.
Captain Kidd had his own inspirations as well. His is from Jiles' friend's great-great-grandfather vaguely remembered as Aloysius Cornelius Kydd. He used to read newspapers as a public performance in Northern Texas. This clearly translated onto the book with that being the job of Captain Kidd, not even mentioning the name similarity.
There may be other inspirations, but these are the clearest ones that factored into the characters and the story of the book. It is also worth mentioning that the book and film are still their own entities of entertainment. Their plot is their own and learning about their inspirations will not be the same as actually reading or watching News of the World.
-Coleman
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