The potential box office smash Tom Hanks thought was unnecessary: “Why would we?”
It’s fair to say that when you have starred in over 100 movies and amassed over $4.5 billion at the box office, you have very few regrets about your career. However, when Tom Hanks finally hangs up his acting boots and looks back at his long and winding résumé, there may be one picture that he wishes had found some space in the lengthy list of movies made.
Not only because the movie will have, undoubtedly, filled his own bank account to the brim, nor because it would have certainly increased his box office takings by a considerable sum, but because it would have given him a chance to revisit one of his most legendary characters and perhaps offered some closure on one of the most pivotal roles of his career.
Hanks has had many legendary roles over his career, but few are as iconic as his turn as the titular hero in Forrest Gump. The movie received critical acclaim upon its release and has since been guaranteed a place in cinema history thanks to its heartwarming narrative and unique delivery. Hanks as Gump is one of the most enduring images of 20th-century cinema and was so beloved that it has often been revisited for a potential sequel.
The author of the original book, Winston Groom, buoyed by the success of the movie, wrote his own sequel, titled Gump and Co, which even encouraged the movie’s original screenwriter to adapt it for the silver screen in 2001. While development on the idea began, the US was hit by the September 11th terror attacks, and the picture was put on indefinite hiatus. It has remained there ever since, even as new audiences fall in love with Forrest and his idiosyncratic look at life.
As Hanks and Forrest Gump director collaborated on the recent movie Here, which also starred Robin Wright, who plays Jenny in Forrest Gump, naturally, the promotion trail was littered with questions about the legendary movie. The hottest word, though, was whether there would be a sequel to the 1994 picture. Sadly, Hanks was relatively dismissive of the idea.
“Well, Winston Groom did write another version of it,” Hanks replied when asked the question on the ReelBlend Podcast, “But his first book was very different for a while. It was a real great interpretation, and in fact, there was a version of a second [movie]. Eric Roth and Bob and I, we got together and Eric had sort of mapped out what the second one could be.”
However, it appeared that the trio weren’t interested in pursuing the story any further, even if it meant increasing their bank balance significantly. “The studio actually said, ‘What, are you guys allergic to money?’ That’s one of the things they said. ‘What, you guys don’t want us to pull a dump truck up to your house and unload nickels, dimes and quarters?'” he continued. “I said, ‘OK, well, we don’t know what it’s going to be.’ So, we got together and talked about the possibilities of what the possibilities could be, and here’s what we could do.”
The group did discuss a few ideas: “We could come up with a story, we could come up with a plot, we could come up with things that happen to the characters, we could come up with something that would work, but that was the only meeting that we ever had about it.”
However, while the allure of trick loads of cash may appeal to a variety of actors when you’ve had as impactful a career as Hanks has enjoyed, it no longer becomes about the money but about the story you’re telling, and Hanks felt as if Forrest Gunp’s story was over: “When it was done, we just said, ‘This remains unnecessary. Why would we try to continue a story that came to its own complete and proper conclusion?’ So, yeah, talked about, never gonna happen.”
