Tom Hanks is in talks to reunite with Meg Ryan on the big screen.

Sleepless In Seattle star Meg is due to make her directorial debut with new film Ithaca, an adaptation of William Saroyan's classic 1943 novel The Human Comedy.

Tom is in talks to make a cameo in the World War II drama, as well as executive producing the project, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Set in a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley in 1942, Ithaca recounts the story of 14-year-old Homer Macauley, a telegraph bike messenger. His older brother has gone to fight in World War II, leaving him to care for his widowed mother, his older sister and his four-year-old brother, Ulysses.

The effects of the war are revealed as Homer delivers messages of love, friendship, pain and death, including one message that alters his own life forever. Tom would play the boy's father.

Meg, who will appear in the film, is due to start shooting in Virginia in July. Sam Shepard, Melanie Griffith and Jack Quaid are also set to star.

Ithaca would be the fourth film collaboration for Tom and Meg, who starred together in Joe Versus The Volcano, Sleepless In Seattle and most recently You've Got Mail, which came out in 1998.

The Human Comedy, which takes inspiration from Homer's Odyssey, was also made into a film starring Mickey Rooney, which Saroyan wrote the script for, before being fired from the movie and rewriting it as a novel.