After expressing that it’s a “heartbreak” that the World War II action-thriller “Greyhound” is skipping a theatrical release and going direct to the Apple TV+ service later this week, the film’s screenwriter and star Tom Hanks has clarified his statements with The Today Show (via Coming Soon.
In the interview, Hanks says he’s very grateful to the tech giant for making possible for everybody to see it and specifies that his ‘heartbreak’ isn’t over the chosen platform but how COVID-19 has robbed us all of the experience of going to the cinema:
“Well, I’m actually thrilled that Apple TV is making it possible for everybody to see it. Not only worldwide, as long as you have Apple Television, but also the day after my 64th birthday, thank you, thank you very much. This is a magnificent gift that’s come to us because of Apple.
Because COVID-19 did something heartbreaking to us all. It closed down the theaters. We don’t have the cinema. There isn’t anybody that doesn’t like going to see a good movie with 800 other people and coming out with something in common.
Barring that, Apple Television has saved the day for us. We had a magnificent movie that was not going to be seen because of the realities. It is going to be viewable, and otherwise we would’ve languished in a vault for a movie that, look, is 88 minutes of a thematic story that does speak to what we’re all going through right now.
We didn’t know that at the time we made the film, we were just trying to make a lean, new spare version about procedures and behaviors about how difficult it was to stay alive in the North Atlantic in 1942.”
Based on C.S. Forester’s novel “The Good Shepherd,” the Aaron Schneider-directed film follows an international convoy of 37 Allied ships, led by captain Ernest Krause (Hanks) in his first command of a U.S. destroyer, as it crosses the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic while hotly pursued by wolf packs of Nazi U-boats. With no air cover protection for five days, the captain and his convoy must battle the surrounding enemy in order to give the allies a chance to win the war.
Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan and Elisabeth Shue co-star in the film which will premiere on Apple TV+ on July 10th.
