“Time is undefeated.” Tom Hanks said it in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview with his “Toy Story” co-star Tim Allen, and the point behind it was bleakly practical. Disney, he suggested, could one day stitch together some version of him to keep voicing Woody.
“The question would be whether or not we could cobble together some version of me,” Hanks said, as quoted by Futurism and Dexerto. “Every word we have ever recorded in time in ‘Toy Story’ is on digital media somewhere, so they could put together anything they would want.” Futurism reported that Hanks and Allen agreed it was a “scary thought.”
A sequel that has to earn it
The conversation came as “Toy Story 5” was in cinemas. Geo News reported that the film set a franchise record with a $312 million worldwide opening. The original came out in 1995, which makes the series about 31 years old.
Hanks was not gushing about more sequels. “If you’re gonna do another ‘Toy Story,’ it better be worthwhile,” he told EW. “It better be great. You better be examining some theme that is not just dragging it out because people like the title.” He acknowledged the franchise is “a huge corporate business without a doubt,” but said that unless the material is “good, new, fresh, there’s no reason to do it at all.”
Dexerto noted that talk of a sixth film has already started, with the fifth film’s writer-director Andrew Stanton wanting a “perfect” trilogy for the character Bonnie, as the earlier films did for Andy.
Not a new worry for Hanks
Earlier in June, Hanks told The San Francisco Chronicle his fear is a work that is “blatantly AI,” created and produced start to finish by machine, that audiences watch anyway. “They’ll just say, ‘Well, it’s AI, but you know, I still watched it,’” he said. He added that there is “a certain type of human element” required in the contract between audience and filmmakers, and he worried about the “wearing down of the popular taste to where it just doesn’t matter.”
Geo News traced his unease back to a 2023 episode of The Adam Buxton Podcast. There, it said, Hanks spoke about his first brush with large-scale digital data capture on Robert Zemeckis’ 2004 film “The Polar Express,” and warned that anyone can now replicate themselves at any age. Even if he were hit by a bus tomorrow, he said, his performances could “go on and on and on and on.”
Futurism added that Hanks has repeatedly warned fans about scams using AI deepfakes of his likeness without his permission, while he defended the AI de-aging used on him for the 2024 Zemeckis film “Here.”
Sources
- Tom Hanks shares ‘scary' AI ‘thought' about ‘Toy Story's' Woody – Geo News
- Tom Hanks Frets AI Could Voice Woody in Even More "Toy Story" Movies – Futurism
- Tom Hanks says Toy Story could continue without him by using AI – Dexerto
