The role Tom Hanks was desperate to play: “I would’ve jumped on that”
In a rarity for an actor who’s been an A-lister since the 1980s and remains as popular as ever, Tom Hanks‘ filmography is remarkably light on franchise fare compared to most of his peers.
Robert Langdon is the only character the two-time Academy Award winner has ever played more than once in live-action, with Ron Howard’s trilogy of literary adaptations standing tall as the only ongoing big screen series to place Hanks front and centre as its leading man and focal point.
Only once as he appeared in somebody else’s sequel, which came when he popped up for a surprise cameo in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Obviously, the fifth Toy Story film is coming to cinemas in the summer of 2026, but in terms of flesh-and-blood Hanks, his back catalogue is lighter than most regarding recurring roles.
Things could have been very different in the mid-1990s, though, when the star was under consideration for a property he’d adored for decades. It might have been jarring to see him there, but as a lifelong fan of Star Trek, Hanks admitted he wouldn’t have thought twice about signing on for First Contact.
The eighth feature-length entry in the big screen franchise and the second to star the crew of The Next Generation, producer Ronald D Moore confirmed “his name was floated in some capacity” during pre-production, but warp speed inventor Zefram Cochrane ended up being played by veteran character actor James Cromwell instead.
It would have been a huge coup for First Contact to nab a name of Hanks’ calibre, which would have had the potential to provide a significant box office boost, too. Not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things when the movie earned almost $150 million at the box office, but ‘America’s Dad’ nonetheless revealed he’d have been there in an instant had he gotten the call.
“The guy who invented warp drive? Oh, come on, I would have jumped on that,” he told Josh Horowitz. “I would have come in, I would have brought gift Tribbles to everybody on the first meeting. ‘Guys, here’s some Tribbles for you.'”
Hanks even slapped his nerd credentials on the sleeve by referring to Tribbles, those pesky furry critters that caused so much chaos for William Shatner’s Captain Kirk in a classic 1967 episode of the original Star Trek show, and it would have been a dream come true for the actor to find himself strutting his stuff on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Director and star William Frakes did suggest that it would have been a bad idea casting Hanks because he was so famous it would have made it impossible to buy him as a fictional character in a Star Trek setting, which probably makes him the only filmmaker in modern Hollywood history who was glad one of the most popular and talented names of their generation didn’t end up playing a major part in their production.
