Before the pandemic, “Greyhound” was going
to hit theaters in early June, smack in between
“Wonder Woman 1984” and “Top Gun 2.” “We
were going to fight like the scrappy runt of a
litter in order to get somebody to pay attention
to us,” says Hanks, chuckling.
Now, “Greyhound” will head straight into
homes as a marquee event with little
competition of similar scale or star power. A
Tom Hanks-led, special effects-laden WWII
movie is a weight class above most straight-to-
streaming options in this strange summer
movie season. Disney+ has “Hamilton,” but
Apple TV+ has Hanks.
The film, made for about $40 million and
acquired by Apple for a reported $70 million,
is a taut 88-minute naval drama about a lesser-
seen theater of WWII, the Battle of the Atlantic.
Hanks’ character is a humble captain for the
first time shepherding a convoy of boats across
the Atlantic, guarding them from attacking
German U-boats while traversing the “black
pit” – the middle ocean territory bereft of air
support. All heavy waves, faint sonar blips and
evasive maneuvers, the film takes on almost
mythical qualities.
“When everything went kablooey, we began
to imagine: ‘Well, we have this movie about the
stasis of characters in the middle of something
of which they have no idea how long it’s
going to last,’” says Hanks. “We didn’t expect a
worldwide pandemic to mirror the theme and
the action of the movie.”
“This is just about yesterday, today and
tomorrow,” Hanks says. “Those three days are
pretty much all humanity has.”