Tom Hanks has revealed that he once considered a sequel to Forrest Gump for all of 40 minutes. Based on the 1986 novel of the same name, the classic drama took home six Oscars in 1995, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.
It was also an enormous financial success, becoming the highest grossing film at the American box office in the year of its release and coming in second to only The Lion King worldwide. The film even spawned a chain of seafood restaurants, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., with locations still up and running all over the world. And yet, a sequel was never made.
Winston Groom published a sequel to his first Forrest Gump novel in 1995. Titled Gump & Co., the book finds Forrest’s shrimp business going under, leaving him trying to sell encyclopedias on the street while he raises Little Forrest.
Screenwriter Eric Roth finished a draft for a script in 2001, which included scenes like Forrest finding himself in the back of O.J. Simpson’s Bronco and a run-in with Princess Diana at a charity event.
Roth turned in the script the day before 9/11, which he said robbed the potential movie of any meaning it would have had. It was almost resurrected by Paramount in 2007, but to no avail.
But now, Hanks says that discussions with director Robert Zemeckis never materialized into a sequel with any “concrete shape.” On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hanks recalls a single conversation with Zemeckis that, after only 40 minutes of discussion, killed the possibility of a sequel for both of them. Read what Hanks had to say below:
“I will say that, with a long time in between, we did take a stab at talking about another Forrest Gump that lasted all of 40 minutes. And then we never…we said, ‘Guys, come on.’”
“A smart thing I did is I’ve never signed a contract that had a contractual obligation to a sequel. I’ve always said, ‘Guys, if there’s a reason to do it, let’s do it. But you guys can’t force me.’ There is that natural inclination that is one of pure commerce that says, ‘Hey, you just had a hit, so do it again and you’ll have a hit.’”
It’s hard to imagine that a Forrest Gump sequel would not have been made if the original film were released today. Now, the film industry often looks for every possible opportunity to capitalize off of even moderately successful movies.
Forrest Gump went far beyond being a moderate success and even had a sequel novel to base a screenplay around, which always made the struggle to lock down another film a bit of a head-scratcher. Based on Hanks’ comment, it seems he likely thought the movie did a good enough job of telling Forrest’s story on its own and he was right.
To say that Gump & Co. wasn’t well-received would be putting it mildly, as many frustrated readers deemed it an unnecessary attempt to capitalize off of the first. Forrest Gump is widely considered a classic on its own, which makes a second movie inherently risky.
Moviegoers have watched sub-par sequels to beloved movies tarnish the legacy of the original for decades. With that in mind, Hanks was ahead of the curve when he took himself out of the running for another Forrest Gump early on.
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