<Li> Cotter Smith as William Macomber </Li> <Li> Jennifer Dundas as Liz Hylton </Li> <P> In October 2016 Amy Pascal won a bid for the rights to the screenplay The Post, written by Liz Hannah . In February 2017, Steven Spielberg had halted pre-production on The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara after a casting setback, and consequently opened his schedule to other potential films to direct . The following month, it was announced that Spielberg was in negotiations to direct and produce the film, with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in talks for the roles of Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee, respectively . The Post is the first time that Spielberg, Streep, and Hanks had all worked together on a film . </P> <P> Spielberg read the screenplay and decided to direct the film as soon as possible, citing that "when I read the first draft of the script, this wasn't something that could wait three years or two years--this was a story I felt we needed to tell today ." Spielberg worked on The Post while post-production work continued on the visual - effects - heavy Ready Player One, a situation familiar to him from concurrently producing, in the early 1990s, Jurassic Park and Schindler's List . Josh Singer was hired to re-write the screenplay ten weeks before filming . </P>

When did they start production on the post