The biggest flop of Tom Hanks’ career is “the most visually beautiful movie” he ever made
Having spent more than 30 years as one of the most popular stars in the business, a Tom Hanks movie going down in a ball of box office flames is an occurrence so rare that it’s basically an anomaly at this point.
Of course, he wasn’t quite so bankable and bulletproof during the formative stages of his big-screen career, although that’s not to say he didn’t find success very early on. Ron Howard’s Splash was only his second-ever feature film credit and wasted no time underlining his talent as both a romantic lead and superstar-in-waiting.
Bawdy comedy Bachelor Party recouped its budget more than five times over in ticket sales, and The Money Pit was another certifiable hit that marked his first collaboration with Steven Spielberg, long before the executive producer of the 1986 comedy would become his most famous creative partner.
The recurring theme is that the majority of Hanks’ early vehicles were comedies, something he sought to rectify by taking a chance to stretch his dramatic boundaries. Co-writer and director Moshé Mizrahi’s Every Time We Say Goodbye may have been modestly budgeted by Hollywood standards, but it was still the most expensive Israeli production in history at the time.
That transition marked a crucial point in Hanks’ development as an actor. Moving away from broad comedies into more serious material was always going to carry risk, especially for someone still establishing their identity in Hollywood.
It also underlines how even the most successful careers are shaped by experimentation. Not every gamble pays off commercially, but those early detours often lay the groundwork for the range and credibility that define a star’s legacy.
Hanks plays a World War II pilot shot down in North Africa who recuperates from his injuries in Jerusalem, where he falls in love with a Jewish woman. Naturally, their budding relationship causes plenty of familial and cultural friction, with the arrival of an American soldier in their midst leading to tension that expands far beyond his romance.
In an interview with David Sheff several years after the film’s release, Hanks conceded that even though Every Time We Say Goodbye “disappeared without a trace,” he was happy to brand it as “probably the most visually beautiful movie I’ve ever made”. It’s unknown whether that’s still an opinion he harbours almost 40 years further down the line, but it did set a record for the actor, and not in a good way.
By earning a miserly $279,000 at the box office, Every Time We Say Goodbye remains Hanks’ lowest-grossing film to ever score a theatrical release. At least he got it out of the way early, but it’s an unwanted distinction that’s seen it stay rooted firmly at the bottom of the pile. On the plus side, that’s a testament to Hanks’ enduring stardom, with none of his features post-1986 coming anywhere close to those disastrous numbers.
2008’s The Great Buck Howard is the only other Hanks film ever that didn’t manage to clear a million during its theatrical run, and even at that, it came mighty close after topping out at over $900,000. It might be a feast for the eyes, but Every Time We Say Goodbye has been perpetually stuck at the bottom of the earnings barrel since 1986.
