Tom Hanks says the decision to send his new movie Greyhound straight to a streaming platform instead of cinemas is ‘heartbreaking’
The World War II movie, based on the book The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester and set around the Battle of the Atlantic, was supposed to be released in cinemas in June this year.
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However, the coronavirus pandemic put paid that that, with the announcement that it would instead be released on AppleTV+ in July.
Speaking to The Guardian, Hanks said that the change of plans had been ‘an absolute heartbreak’.
“I don’t mean to make angry my Apple overlords, but there is a difference in picture and sound quality,” he added.
Tom Hanks in a still from Greyhound. (Apple TV+)
Hanks also went on to jokingly that ‘the cruel whipmasters at Apple‘ had insisted that he conduct his video interview with the newspaper on a white wall background, meaning that he looks as if he is in ‘a witness protection programme. But here I am, bowing to the needs of Apple TV’.
The Saving Private Ryan star also discussed his brush with coronavirus.
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Both he and his wife Rita Wilson contracted the disease in Australia, where he was about to begin shooting the new Baz Luhrmann movie, in which he plays Elvis Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker.
“Oh no, we’re fine,” he said. “Our discomfort because of the virus was pretty much done in two weeks and we had very different reactions, and that was odd.
“My wife lost her sense of taste and smell, she had severe nausea, she had a much higher fever than I did. I just had crippling body aches, I was very fatigued all the time and I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than about 12 minutes. That last bit is kinda like my natural state anyway,”
The couple have since provided blood to researchers working on a vaccine.