“There might be a few less sweaty people”: Tom Hanks’ novel way of dealing with disappointment
Outside of nailed-on franchise fare, high-profile sequels, or low-budget horror, there aren’t many movies that can be called guaranteed successes pre-release. Tom Hanks is popular enough that his name alone puts any film he’s in with a good chance of turning a profit, but he’s hardly immune.
He’s got a better track record than most of his peers, though, or at least the ones who haven’t made a habit of leaning on action-packed blockbusters and effects-driven IP to sustain their bankability. Hanks has only reprised one role in his entire career and he’s never made an action flick, which makes his status as one of the modern era’s biggest draws even more undeniable.
Hanks has been in 21 movies that cleared $200 million at the global box office, which is ten more than Leonardo DiCaprio, four more than Harrison Ford, three more than Will Smith, and only five less than Tom Cruise. Denzel Washington has only ever been in three, and Clint Eastwood only has two, which hammers home just how big of a star Hanks is and how long he’s been one.
There will inevitably be misses along the way, but as a performer, first and foremost, Hanks is driven more by the people he’s working with and the experience he has working with them than by the ticket sales. Of course, studio executives operate under a completely different mindset, but the two-time Academy Award winner has learned to roll with the punches.
“See, it’s all about hindsight,” he explained to Movies before naming two notable underperformers. “The wisdom that one has after a film has come out and performed the way it has, it has nothing to do with the reality of making the film. Working with the Coen brothers on something like The Ladykillers or working with Steven Spielberg again on The Terminal is the same exact thing, one damn thing after another. How are we going to make sense of this process?”
Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code remains the highest-grossing live-action release in Hanks’ filmography, and while the sequel Angels & Demons was successful, it earned a quarter of a billion dollars less than its predecessor. Did that make it any more or less of a worthwhile experience in his eyes? Nope, because they’re all the same thing at a foundational level.
Hanks did admit that “there might be a few less sweaty people at the studio because of the amount of money that goes into it” when one of his pictures emerges as a hit, but at the end of the day, “It’s all a mix, man.” The star appreciates that perspiring studio bosses are an eventuality he’d prefer to avoid, but at the same time, he knows that the decision lies entirely in the hands of the audience, placing them in the position of true power over which movies sink and which ones swim.
