Sam Mendes, the great hope of British theatre, took a further step towards Hollywood yesterday, announcing that he had agreed to direct a gangster film starring Tom Hanks.

Mendes, whose US movie debut, American Beauty, won five Oscars, is to direct the all-American star in The Road to Perdition, a big budget 1930s drama based on a comic strip. Hanks will play a Chicago hitman dubbed The Angel, who seeks vengeance for the murder of his wife and two sons.

A spokeswoman for the director, who is also artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse theatre, in London, said: "The film will be based on the graphic novel, but it is not going to be exactly the same. It is an epic which will move from 1930s Chicago to the Badlands of North Dakota, and Tom is going to be playing a very different role to his normal ones."

American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, was a sharp critique of the American dream which played surprisingly well with US audiences, winning Oscars for best actor, best film and best director.

Hanks, who won best actor Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, has recently taken on a directorial role in episodes of the second world war series Band of Brothers.

Filming of The Road to Perdition is due to take place next year. In the meantime the director has pledged to continue his theatre work.

He recently announced he would direct a new play at the Donmar, the wartime piece To the Green Fields Beyond. The play, due to run from September 25, stars Dougray Scott, who appeared in Mission Impossible 2, and Ray Winstone as members of a tank unit.

In June, Mendes said that British theatre was in danger of being "held hostage by the lure of glamour" after the influx of US film adaptations and stars. Mendes himself persuaded Nicole Kidman to appear in The Blue Room at the Donmar Warehouse.