Did You Know Tom Hanks Funded The Iconic Running Scene In Forrest Gump After Studio Refused To Pay? Deets Inside
Forrest Gump is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom and other than Tom Hanks, the film also stars Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and Sally Field
The Iconic Running Scene In Forrest Gump Was Also Chopped, Here’s How Tom Hanks Came To The Rescue ( Photo Credit – Still, Poster from Forrest Gump )
Advertisement
Forrest Gump remains one of the most iconic Hollywood films in Tom Hanks’ career as the movie won multiple Oscar awards including the Best Actor. The film’s titular character was seen in different historical events in America and among all the sequences, the running scene at the end remains memorable. Although it looked amazing on screen but did you know the scene was rejected by the producers claiming it was too expensive to shoot?
Directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth. The comedy-drama is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom and other than Tom, the film also stars Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and Sally Field. The movie remained the second-highest-grossing film of 1994, behind The Lion King.
Coming back to the topic, a few years ago, Tom Hanks sat for an interview with In Depth with Graham Bensinger, where he spoke about the making of Forrest Gump. In one of the segments, the actor opened up about the most iconic running scene in the film and claimed that the studio refused to fund that scene citing the sequence being the most expensive, while the filmmaker Robert Zemeckis argued with the producer about how crucial the scene is for the film.
Tom Hanks said, “The studio just said ‘We can’t afford it, you’re not gonna do it’ and Bob (Robert Zemeckis) said, ‘Yeah, there’s no movie—this—it’s too important a part of the movie just to cut. We can make this work’, and they said ‘No, you can’t.’ And it came around to me, and my crack agent said ‘Bob’s gonna come talk to you about what we called it, the run, about the run.’ And I said ‘Why’s he talking to me, he’s the boss. I’ll do whatever he says. This is above my pay grade.’”
“And Bob came and he—we talked one night. He drove out and talked a night, I said ‘How you doing Bob’, and he said, ‘Look, I can’t do that, you are the only guy, you are Forrest Gump. You’re the title role in this, there is no movie without you playing him. I need you to be not an actor, not an employee, I need you to be my soulmate. I will open up the cuts and talk about every aspect of the post-production of this with you if you will be my collaborator and not just my employee,” Hanks said.
Tom Hanks concluded saying, “He (Robert Zemeckis) said, ‘Well, this run is going to cost X amount of dollars’, and it wasn’t cheap. And I said ‘OK’, and said ‘You and I are going to split that amount, and we’re going to give it back (to the producers). OK, we’ll give you the money back, but your guys are going to have to share the profits a little bit more. Which the studio said, ‘Fabulous, great, OK. This is good for us too.’”
The film went on to earn more than 693 Million Dollars and interestingly, Tom earned an estimated 65 Million Dollars in profits.
Meanwhile, Tom Hanks starrer Forrest Gump got remade in Bollywood with superstar Aamir Khan playing the lead character in the movie titled, Laal Singh Chaddha. The film is scheduled to release tomorrow, August 11, 2022.
