We spoke to Tom Hanks for the latest issue of Empire, and in the course of a career-spanning interview he told us a little bit about the state of play on Toy Story 3, as well as** Angels & Demons** and his HBO Pacific War series. First up, Pixar!
"I have been in and done three big complete recording sessions and will probably have at least one more to do, possibly in about eight months," said Hanks of his Toy Story 3 work. "Then eight months after that I'll do a mop-up and have three more sessions after that. Those movies are beasts*.***
"They did an interesting thing on this one. They did not send us a script. They showed us a complete story reel of the entire movie, with storyboards moving from one to the next, and the people up at Pixar recorded some voices with some music and sound effects. Tim Allen and John Ratzenberger and I went in a movie theatre, watched the reel and said, 'This is great, let's get to work!'"
On Angels & Demons, Hank addressed the the thorny issue of the film's ban from filming in the Vatican. "Everyone says, 'Oh, isn't it terrible that the Vatican didn't let you shoot?' The Vatican is all over this movie. 'There it is there, it's in the background here, we're driving past it there!' We built all the rest on a soundstage for dead solid matches. I don't know a lot of people who get to make movies in St Peter's Basiliva anyway, so I don't think anyone guessed."
On The Pacific War, his HBO series that's a spiritual sequel to Band of Brothers, Hanks said, "That's having its score finalised. I think it's going to be March 2010. We are able to visit the home front on this one and we're able to show the guys before the War and after. We show some of the most vicious stuff I've ever seen on film - because it has to be."
For much, much more, read all about it in (of course) Empire's 20th birthday issue, out April 23.