Cast Away
Tom Hanks, a desert island, and a volleyball named Wilson. Robert Zemeckis stranded America's most trusted movie star alone on screen for the better part of two hours — and made one of the biggest hits of 2000 out of silence, sunburn, and a volleyball with a face.
Released December 22, 2000, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, Cast Away stars Tom Hanks as Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems analyst whose cargo plane goes down in the Pacific, leaving him marooned on an uninhabited island for four years.
The production itself became Hollywood lore. Hanks had deliberately gained 50 pounds in pre-production to play the soft, deskbound Chuck; filming then ran January to March 1999 before shutting down for a full year so he could lose the weight and grow out his hair and beard for the castaway scenes. Rather than idle, Zemeckis took the same crew and shot an entire other movie — What Lies Beneath — during the hiatus, then resumed Cast Away in April 2000.
The film's most famous co-star is a volleyball. Wilson, the ball Chuck paints a face on and turns into his only companion, became an instant pop-culture shorthand for loneliness — and the anguished cry of "Wilson!" as the ball drifts away remains one of the most parodied movie moments of its era. FedEx, whose planes and packages are everywhere in the film, paid nothing for the placement, yet saw its brand awareness climb overseas after release.
Audiences turned out in force: $429.6 million worldwide made it the third-highest-grossing film of 2000, and Hanks took home the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama along with an Academy Award nomination. The quiet final mystery — the one FedEx box Chuck never opens, painted with golden wings, delivered years late to its sender — gave every ride home from the theater its argument.
Similar items
Forrest Gump
Tom Hanks' Forrest Gump stumbles through history itself, unintentionally shaping 1960s and 70s America with innocent determination. Robert Zemeckis' 1994 phenomenon grossed $678 million worldwide, won 6 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, and made 'Life is like a box of chocolates' part of the language.
Toy Story
Pixar's Toy Story was the first fully computer-animated feature film, directed by John Lasseter and starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as mismatched toys Woody and Buzz. Released November 1995, it reinvented animation and launched a franchise that still dominates 30 years later.
Survivor
The CBS reality-competition show that premiered in 2000 and kicked off the modern reality-TV boom. Contestants are stranded in remote locations, split into rival tribes, and compete in challenges while voting each other out at Tribal Council. Host Jeff Probst's iconic catchphrase "The tribe has spoken" and the show's tagline "outwit, outplay, outlast" became part of the cultural lexicon.
Big Fish
Tim Burton's warmest film: a dying father who has always told his life as a series of tall tales — a giant, a witch who shows your death in her eye, a perfect hidden town called Spectre — and the grown son trying to sort truth from myth before it's too late. Ewan McGregor plays the young father in the fables, Albert Finney the old man telling them.