Take a moment to scan Tom Hanks’ filmography. You aren’t going to find a lot of sequels. The actor did a handful of Dan Brown adaptations, playing the symbologist Robert Langdon, and of course has been a staple of the Toy Story franchise as the voice of Woody. But Hanks usually plays characters that reach a natural conclusion to their arc. Sometimes that means death. Other times, it just means that the story has run its course. That appears to be the case with Forrest Gump, a powerhouse drama that swept the Oscars and earned Hanks his second Best Actor trophy. For years, there was talk of a sequel, Forrest Gump 2, but Hanks himself spoke to CinemaBlend to set the record straight.
Forrest Gump has been a topic of conversation lately because Tom Hanks has reunited with Robin Wright and his Gump director, Robert Zemeckis, for the endearing drama Here, which we reviewed on the site. As part of his promotional tour, Hanks stopped by CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast and talked about how close they got to actually making Forrest Gump 2. As you might imagine, the studio was high on the idea. But as Hanks told ReelBlend:
Eric Roth and Bob and I, we got together, and Eric sort of mapped out what the second one could be. The studio actually said, ‘What, are you guys allergic to money?’ That’s one of the things they said. ‘What, you guys don’t want us to pull a dump truck up to your house and unload nickels, dimes and quarters?’ I said, ‘Okay, well, you know, we don’t know what it would be!’ And so we got together and talked about what the possibilities could be. And here’s what we could do. We could come up with a story. We could come up with a plot. We could come up with things that happened to the characters. We could come up with something that would work. But that was the only meeting we ever had about it, because when it was done, we just said, ‘This remains unnecessary.’ Why would we try to continue a story that came to its own complete and proper conclusion? So yeah. Talked about! Never gonna happen.
How can you not admire Tom Hanks for that level of integrity? It would be so easy for him to chase after guaranteed money for a sequel that the audience thinks it wants. But as the main face of a franchise, and one of the top creatives driving the bus forward, he and Zemeckis (and screenwriter Eric Roth) understood that the story they wanted to tell was finished. Even with the existence of a book as a source, there was no need to keep pushing that rock down the road.
And yet, the more we talked with Hanks about the industry, the more we learned that if they made Forrest Gump today, the possibility of a sequel might have been much stronger. Hanks went on to tell ReelBlend:
Here’s how many things have changed. We could have wanted to make this movie now, and we would’ve had to sign a contract guaranteeing a sequel for some sort of movie. Because intellectual property now is absolute king when it comes down to green lighting films. So I don’t know if we… I don’t know. We always have this conversation. ‘Could we even get away with making Forrest Gump now?’ Storywise? Maybe some aspect of who Forrest is. But I don’t think a studio would allow it without some version of a guaranteed ‘Next One,’ somehow.
And he’s right. Well, sort of. Tom Hanks remains one of the last actors who can help push a movie like Here into theaters, with no guarantee of a sequel. (They’d have to call it There, right?) But scan the release calendar and you see Denzel Washington, Hanks’ co-star in Philadelphia and one of our all-time greats, appearing in Gladiator 2. Because, as Hanks says, IP is absolute king.
Catch the full Tom Hanks interview on ReelBlend now:
Here is in theaters now. It’s well worth your time to go see it at the movies.