By any standard, Forrest Gump is one of the most successful movies of all time. Released in 1994, it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time, won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, and became a pop culture phenomenon that’s still going strong today: how many movies can say they inspired a chain of themed restaurants?
Forrest Gump has been a classic for so long that it’s easy to forget how much of a gamble the movie was at the time: a comedy-drama about a low-IQ man’s adventures through American history was far from guaranteed to be a blockbuster hit, even with Tom Hanks as its star and Robert Zemeckis at the helm.
In a new interview, Hanks revealed that he had some serious doubts about the film at the time, wondering if anyone would see it — or eve if it would damage his career.
The two-time Oscar winner, promoting his new book The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece at the New York Live event, opened up about the making of Forrest Gump and said no one thought it would be a smash hit.
“I say, ‘Hey Bob, I’ve got a question for you. Is anybody going to care about this movie?’” Hanks recalled asking director Robert Zemeckis, per Variety. “This guy sitting on a thing in these goofy shoes and this cuckoo suit with a suitcase full of Curious George books and stuff like that… are we doing anything here that is going to make any sense to anybody?”
The Back to the Future director was not exactly encouraging: “It’s a minefield, Tom. It’s a minefield,” Hanks recalled Zemeckis telling him. “We may be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.”
But Hanks says the director took a big risk on the project anyway, landing on what Hanks called “the absolute truth.”
“We are going to commit something to film today, and eventually we’ll cut this into something,’” Hanks recalled him saying. “You do not know if it is going to work out.”
Clearly it did work out, big time: Forrest Gump was a massive smash hit, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year in North America. It won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture (triumphing in a tough field that included Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption) Best Actor for Tom Hanks and Best Director for Zemeckis.
Their big gamble paid off… but Hanks and Zemeckis also knew when to quit while they were ahead. For years there has been talk of a sequel to Forrest Gump (the novel the film is based on got a sequel called Gump & Co.), but it has never come to fruition — and Hanks says he’s not interested in revisiting the iconic role.
Speaking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast last fall, Hanks said talks about a Forrest Gump sequel “lasted all of 40 minutes.”
“A smart thing I did is I’ve never signed a contract that had a contractual obligation to a sequel,” Hanks said. “I’ve always said, ‘Guys, if there’s a reason to do it, let’s do it. But you guys can’t force me.’”
Screenwriter Eric Roth said he wrote a treatment for a film sequel in 2001, but Hanks and Zemeckis reportedly said it was no longer “relevant” after 9/11.
Today, Forrest Gump remains a beloved classic with audiences — a reminder that sometimes it pays off to take risks in Hollywood.
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READ MORE:
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- Tom Hanks, the award-winning actor, believes out of his 80-plus films only four are ‘pretty good’
