Tom Hanks Helped Pay To Make Forrest Gump When Money Got Tight

Paramount Pictures

The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company dividends must have come through, because it turns out Forrest Gump himself helped pay for parts of the movie after the studio couldn’t afford it. 

During filming the 1994 movie, Hanks was approached by Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis who asked Hanks to become a ‘collaborator’ of the film, rather than just its lead.

With Hanks becoming a collaborator with Zemeckis, the director promised to keep him in the loop with everything and, following discussions with the Paramount Studios, that he’d receive some of the movie’s profits if Hanks were to financially contribute too.

Paramount Pictures

Of all scenes, it was the iconic cross country run where Forrest Gump randomly runs out of his house and doesn’t stop that the studio found themselves coming up short.

Zemeckis insisted the scene needed to be done, which is what spurred on his collaboration with Hanks, and put his hands in his own pockets to contribute to the film as well.

Watch Hanks talk about it on In Depth with Graham Bensinger here:

He said:

[Robert Zemeckis] said ‘Well, this run is going to cost X amount of dollars.’ And it wasn’t cheap. And I said ‘OK’. He said, ‘You and I are going to split that amount, and we’re going to give it back [to Paramount]. We’ll give you the money back, but you guys [Paramount] are going to have to share the profits a little bit more.’ Which the studio said ‘Fabulous, great. OK.’ And it was good for us, too.

There was another moment during the making of Forrest Gump that Hanks and Zemeckis fronted the cash when Paramount said they couldn’t afford the insurance to shoot a particular scene due to the weather. However Hanks didn’t go into the details as to which scene that was.

He added, ‘It ended up being very easy after that.’

Paramount Pictures

Forrest Gump went on to make a whopping $680 million worldwide, which may not have happened without the help of Hanks and Zemeckis.

Further discussing the film, Hanks explains that they didn’t use the stuff from the first three days of filming because Zemeckis wasn’t quite happy with it.

The director said to Hanks that he ‘didn’t have the character’ of Forrest Gump yet, to which Hanks agreed. Zemeckis told the then 38-year-old actor to not try so hard, and then everything fell into place.

If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com

from UNILAD https://ift.tt/3mYAPh8
via IFTTT