Tom Hanks explains why he’s glad ‘Forrest Gump’ didn’t get a sequel
Hollywood star Tom Hanks has said that he has no desire to revisit the success of Forrest Gump.
The actor, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of the titular Alabama man with an IQ of 75 and a knack for finding himself in the middle of historically pivotal events, revealed that he was happy a sequel never panned out.
Hanks has recently re-teamed with Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis and co-star Robin Wright for the upcoming fixed-camera drama Here, and he and Wright spoke to the New York Times last week about their first pairing in the 1994 film.
“It is this extraordinary amalgam that stands completely on its own and never has to be repeated,” Hanks said to the publication. “And thank God we never bothered trying to make another one. Why put a hat on a hat?”
The film was a hit when it came out, earning glowing reviews and rocketing to the number one position at the domestic box office for the year. It went on to win six Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’ for Hanks, and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’.
In the interview with The New York Times, Hanks revealed that people still approach him about the movie. “I still get letters all the time saying, ‘Every year the family gets together, we do what we did back in 1995, when it first came out on home video,’” he said.
He added: “‘We all watch it, from beginning to end.’ Right now, someone is watching that movie from beginning to end somewhere in the world. And it’s landing with that same sense of comfort and familiarity.”
Considering what a success the film was on all fronts, it’s surprising that a sequel was never made. This is particularly true given that Winston Groom, the author of the novel on which the film was based, wrote a follow-up, Gump & Co., the year after the film was released.
In a 2022 conversation on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hanks revealed that they “did take a stab at talking about another Forrest Gump,” but it “lasted all of 40 minutes.”
Although the actor’s comments suggest that they didn’t make a follow-up due to the completeness of the first film, some of it may have had to do with the quality of Groom’s second book. Instead of picking up where he had left off in the first novel, Groom broke the fourth wall and started the sequel with Forrest saying, “[D]on’t never let nobody make a movie of your life story,” and ended it with the protagonist meeting Tom Hanks at the Oscars and winning the award for “Most Lovable Certified Idiot in America.”
Hollywood is usually happy to alter source material, but the screenwriters might have had to have thrown out the second novel entirely to create a film that would have any hope of living up to the first. Still, other sources claim that it was the 9/11 attacks the stopped the sequel in its tracks. A movie about a relentless optimist just seemed out of step with reality at the time.
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