Why is Tom Hanks making a sequel to the movie that broke his heart?
In recent years, Tom Hanks hasn’t enjoyed the same reliable hit rate he had in the 1990s and 2000s. Aside from theatrical successes like Elvis and A Man Called Otto, the man once dubbed ‘America’s dad’ has seen too many of his leading roles either stumble at the box office or quietly drop onto streaming platforms. Finch and Pinocchio debuted on AppleTV+ and Disney+, while News of the World was released internationally via Netflix.
One longstanding Hanks passion project was actually ‘Patient Zero’ for his dalliance with the streamers, and that was 2020’s World War II thriller Greyhound. Based on a 1955 novel by C S Forester, Hanks spent a decade working on the screenplay himself, and the film was intended to be theatrically released on June 12th, 2020. However, when the pandemic swept across the globe and threw Hollywood into disarray, the film was sold to AppleTV+ in a $70m deal.
Greyhound debuted on Apple’s fledgling streaming service only a month after its proposed cinema date, and the tech giant later boasted that it had achieved huge numbers on the platform. However, Hanks didn’t seem too happy about the fate of his film when he spoke to The Guardian a few days before its low-key streaming release. He deemed the shift from theatrical distribution to at-home viewing “an absolute heartbreak”, and groused: “I don’t mean to make angry my Apple overlords, but there is a difference in picture and sound quality.”
Amusingly, this wasn’t the only shade Hanks threw Apple’s way in that interview. He also complained that “the cruel whipmasters at Apple” had forced him to conduct the Zoom chat in front of a plain background, instead of the bookcase in his well-adorned office. He joked that this made him appear more like someone in “a witness protection programme” than a world-famous movie star. “But here I am,” he shrugged defeatedly, “Bowing to the needs of Apple TV”.
All in all, then, it doesn’t sound like Hanks was a happy camper to be throwing his hat in the ring with Apple. This is why his fans could have been forgiven for being confused when Finch also landed there in November 2021, and even more befuddled when a Greyhound sequel was announced to be in development a year later, once again at Apple. It would take three years for momentum on the project to truly gain traction, but in April 2025, Deadline announced Greyhound 2 would begin shooting in January 2026, with Hanks and co-star Stephen Graham expected to reprise their roles.
Why would Hanks agree to make a sequel to a film he claimed broke his heart? Why would he do it for the same streaming company, and with the same release strategy, which aggravated him in the first place? Well, the answer, as with most things in this world, likely boils down to two things: money and compromise.
Hanks has been in the business of making movies for most of his adult life, and he’s seen the industry undergo vast changes over the years. This has made him a realist, someone who knows that sometimes you’ve got to work within the strictures of the movie landscape, whether you like it or not.
However, he’s also deeply passionate about certain subjects, chief among them World War II, and this combination has moulded a movie star who will do what he must to keep making the things he loves. If he has to sign a deal with a streamer to get the green light on a sequel to the war movie he spent a decade developing, that’s what he’ll do, even if he may struggle to make his peace with that vision not being experienced in a cinema.
Hanks’ outlook on this compromise to how things are instead of how he wants them to be can be best summarised by something he told Datebook. “The great advantage is that the entire world can see the movie at the same time,” he noted. “The heartbreak is that 800 people don’t get to go into a theatre as strangers, watch Greyhound, and come out 88 minutes later with something in common.”
