Tom Hanks Talks About Toy Story 3

Posted by Dominic von Riedemann Apr 24, 2009

(Once again, I'm using this space for a news story that doesn't have enough information to warrant a full article)

In a recent interview with Empire, Tom Hanks discussed his voice work on the upcoming Disney/Pixar film Toy Story 3, which will be the Emeryville studio's big offering for 2010.

"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," Hanks told the magazine. "Then eight months after that I'll do a mop-up and have three more sessions after that. Those movies are beasts"

Original director John Lasseter will not be helming this installment: Toy Story 2 co-director Lee Unkrich is taking sole control of the reins for this one, working from a script by Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine).

"They did an interesting thing on this one," Hanks revealed. "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 (Buzz Lightyear) and John Ratzenberger (Hamm the Piggy Bank) and I went in a movie theatre, watched the reel and said, 'This is great, let's get to work!'"

Back when Disney and Pixar were on the outs (mainly due to then-CEO Michael Eisner trying to play hardball), Disney was trying to develop a Pixar-less Toy Story 3 through its Circle 7 imprint. When Eisner was ousted and Disney bought Pixar, new creative chief Lasseter tossed the Circle 7 script and got the Pixar brain trust to work generating a story.

Toy Story 3 comes out on June 18, 2010.