The childhood dream Tom Hanks tried and failed to realise on the big screen: “Can you survive?”
Surely the greatest thing about achieving an incredible amount of power and influence in the industry is being able to use it to satisfy your childhood dreams. I mean, most actors are living their childhood dreams simply by being Hollywood stars, but being able to take that one step further and make movies about things you loved as a child – now that must be fun.
When Barbie was made, I’m sure the actors involved (and director Greta Gerwig, of course) got a massive kick out of filming within life-size dream houses, essentially living in doll world for an extended period of time. That’s all you could ever dream of as a kid.
Tom Hanks, who certainly healed his inner child while filming Big, once had dreams of bringing a different Mattel doll to the big screen: Major Matt Mason. The astronaut toy emerged just three years before the moon landing in 1969, hitting the market at the perfect time. Kids were obsessed with this action figure, but by the time the space race buzz had died down, consumers seemed less interested in the toy, and by the mid-1970s, it had been discontinued.
A 3D movie of Major Matt Mason’s story, with Hanks of course playing his childhood favourite toy, was announced in 2011. Nothing ever came of the film, though, despite Hanks reportedly working on a screenplay, and it remains unproduced. With Hanks having starred in the popular film Apollo 13 in 1995, this wouldn’t be Hanks’ first foray into outer space, but it was going to take a fair bit of planning to bring this Mattel doll to life for the silver screen, and in the end, the actor just got weighed down with other projects.
Yet, it’s clearly something that he isn’t ready to give up on, because talks of the film reemerged in 2019, courtesy of Paramount Pictures. That was seven years ago, though, and still, no Major Matt Mason movie has been made. Plans for Akiva Goldsman to write the film were in place, but within a few years, it was Mattel’s Barbie doll that became the subject of a major movie instead.
Becoming an incredible success which grossed over $1billion and spawned countless merchandising tie-ins, the film showed just how profitable a movie about a Mattel doll could be, and soon the company announced plans for other doll movies about the likes of Polly Pocket and American Girl. While there have been animated movies and TV shows following these various doll lines in the past, Barbie showed the possibility of bringing a toy into a serious cinematic arena with A-list stars, appealing to both young and old viewers.
So, now, with the success of Gerwig’s film behind them, perhaps Hanks will be able to re-pitch his idea for a Major Matt Mason movie to Mattel and actually get the green light. After all these years, it seems about time that Hanks gets to fulfil his childhood dream of actually becoming Matt Mason, but wait much longer, and I’m sure the movie will take a completely, slightly geriatric turn.
