[5] It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the performances of Hanks and Zengel, as well as the cinematography, musical score, and Greengrass's direction.

Kidd initially plans to leave Johanna in the care of friends Simon and Doris Boudlin, but accepts responsibility for returning the girl to her family in Castroville, some 400 miles away, after she recklessly tries to run away with a band of traveling Native Americans during a storm.

In Dallas, Kidd stops at a local inn run by Ella Gannett, an intimate old acquaintance, whom he discovers speaks Kiowa and learns that Johanna's adoptive Native American family was also killed, making her "an orphan twice-over."

As the pair continue their journey, their wagon is wrecked and their horses fatally injured when Kidd loses control on a steep road.

He then continues to San Antonio to visit the grave of his wife Maria, who had died of cholera 5 years before while he was away serving in the Confederate Army.

In May 2017, Fox 2000 Pictures bought distribution rights to an adaptation of the Paulette Jiles novel with Luke Davies writing the screenplay and Tom Hanks set to star.

[8] In August, Helena Zengel, Michael Covino, and Fred Hechinger were added to the cast, and Thomas Francis Murphy joined in September.

In November 2020, it was announced that Netflix had acquired international distribution rights, except for the United States and China, and released it digitally on its streaming service on February 10, 2021.

The website's consensus reads: "News of the World takes a slow but absorbing ride down a comfortingly familiar Western trail, guided by Tom Hanks in peak paternal mode.

[3] Writing for IndieWire, David Ehrlich gave the film a grade of B and said, "If Greengrass' broadly entertaining (if gallingly relevant) film is a bit too soft and spread thin to hit with the emotional force that it could, so much of its simple power is owed to the grounded nature of the director's approach, which allows these desperate characters to feel as if they're trying to escape the very genre that threatens to define them forever.

Club gave the film a "B−" and wrote: "Ultimately, News Of The World lives and dies on the presence of its iconic headliner, on the Hanks of it all.

"[23] Mark Kermode of The Observer awarded the film 4 out of 5 stars and wrote, "Having emerged from news documentaries to become a peerless director of vivid real-life dramas (Bloody Sunday, United 93) and frenetically visceral adventures (The Bourne franchise), Greengrass relishes the opportunity to take a more languorous attitude to character development and location, a quality that seems to have confounded some fans of the director’s more urgent fare.

[25] Contrasting views display the comments on the movie by Philipp Emberger, the critic of ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation: under the title "Helena Zengel Overpowering Tom Hanks", he describes her scenes as the highlights of the film, compared to Tom Hanks's solos that seem "arduously one-dimensional", concluding that "Tom Hanks delivers a lot of forgivingness, besides the Dad-vibes", which makes the film "a quiet and steady Western with elements of road-movie, beautiful pictures of landscapes, a relevant topic, lots of heart, and a star named Helena Zengel.

"[28] Professor Dr. Myrton Running Wolf gave a negative review, saying that the film's story portrays a narrative that is not representative of the historical context.