What is Tom Hanks’ highest-grossing movie?
Not only is Tom Hanks a phenomenal character actor with a remarkable range of diverse performances under his belt, but he’s also one of the biggest box office draws in the history of cinema. Hanks’ popularity as an actor has helped his movies gross an eye-watering cumulative $10 billion globally.
Until the Marvel Cinematic Universe began monopolising box office records, only Tom Cruise could claim to have starred in a higher-grossing collection of films across his career. Even movies that seem to venture more into the territory of critical darlings than popcorn fodder, like Philadelphia or The Green Mile, turn into big hitters with Hanks’ name above the title.
Still, there are winners, and there are winners. The majority of Hanks’ films have been major financial successes, but some have reached another level of popularity altogether.
One particular movie franchise in which Hanks has played a major role since its inception has done more for the balance sheet of his movie career than anything else he’s worked on. While Hanks may not have joined the stampede of actors old and new towards the never-ending conveyor belt of Marvel and DC superhero films, he has struck gold with another cinematic juggernaut that’s seen comparable success.
Woody’s billion-dollar round-up
Two Toy Story movies have claimed the top spot in the list of Hanks’ biggest-grossing films at different points in his career. First, Toy Story 3 became the first Tom Hanks movie to cross the billion-dollar threshold in 2010, taking a whopping $1.067 billion at the box office. As the first Toy Story feature for 11 years and billed as the final instalment in a trilogy, anticipation alone brought tens of millions of viewers to the cinema—and it didn’t disappoint.
Yet just a few later, Pixar announced that there would, in fact, be a further instalment to the franchise. As Marvel and Lucasfilm have taught us (or rather, prominent studio executives), you can’t have too much of a good thing. And so, in 2019, Toy Story 4 broke the record of its own forerunner by taking an even greater $1.073 at the box office.
It’s worth mentioning that before these animated sequels muscled their way into the top spots, the highest-grossing film starring Tom Hanks was Ron Howard’s adaptation of the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. This 2006 thriller was hyped for months prior to its release before proving to be a critical disaster. The financial returns on its sequel, Angels & Demons, were understandably much smaller.
The Da Vinci Code is still the live-action Hanks movie to have made the most money, having pushed Forrest Gump into second place. The latter film’s director, Robert Zemeckis, and screenwriter, Eric Roth, are collaborating with Hanks again on his upcoming picture Here. It remains to be seen whether they can finally knock Howard’s mystery thriller off its perch. For Hanks’ legacy as an actor, he should certainly hope so.
