Tom Hanks' Biggest Box Office Movies To Date

Tom Hanks didn't get the name America's Dad for no reason. Part of it is his innately warm persona, but it's also because he's been in so many popular movies that audiences love. How could moviegoers not take a shine to a guy whose appeared in everything from "Saving Private Ryan" to "Forrest Gump?" Appearing in a wide variety of titles and scoring some big Oscar wins along the way have made Hanks a reliable box office draw over multiple decades. Much like Sandra Bullock, Tom Cruise, or Denzel Washington, he's a big-name actor whose appeal has endured over multiple decades of moviegoing.

You don't get to that level of fame without appearing in a diverse array of films. The biggest movies at the worldwide box office that Tom Hanks has ever headlined are a varied bunch, some of them belonging to franchises, but others are one-off adult dramas, the kind of projects that theoretically shouldn't be able to gross $400+ million worldwide. Yet an actor as beloved as Hanks can pull off some extraordinary feats with his box office appeal. Like we said, they don't call him America's Dad for nothing.

While the biggest Stephen King movie adaptations at the box office have often been horror films, like the "It" series, "The Green Mile" was an incredibly impressive success. Released in 1999, "The Green Mile" wouldn't be instantly recognizable as a Stephen King story, though it's another prison-set drama much like 1994's "The Shawshank Redemption." Helping to fuel "The Green Mile's" box office success even more than the name brand presence of King, though, was Tom Hanks occupying the film's lead role, fresh from his 1998 hit "Saving Private Ryan." 

Released in December 1999, "The Green Mile" managed to gross $290.7 million worldwide, including $136.8 million in North America alone. Doing nearly five times its budget, "The Green Mile" benefited not only from the presence of Hanks but also from being an award season darling. Some high-profile Oscar nominations, including ones for best picture and best supporting actor, ensured that "The Green Mile" could keep on trucking at the global box office months after it first premiered. The fact that it could build on the cult following of "The Shawshank Redemption" certainly didn't hit either. Even if it wasn't quite a standard Stephen King movie adaptation, "The Green Mile" still went the distance at the box office, breaking hearts and jerking plenty of tears along the way.

Tom Hanks cemented himself as the premiere movie star of the 1990s through anchoring movies that were both box office hits and Oscar darlings. After headlining the immensely lucrative "Forrest Gump" in 1994, Hanks' "Apollo 13" would also prove appealing to both moviegoers and award season voters in 1995. Usually, you have to trade off box office clout for critical acclaim or vice versa, but Hanks was proving you could have it all. Granted, "Apollo 13" — the tale of a failed trip to the moon that turns into an incredible story of survival — may not have been as big as "Forrest Gump," but it was otherwise about as successful as you could expect an adult drama to be.

Amassing $335.8 million globally, "Apollo 13" was a remarkable success, even on a hefty (for 1995) budget of $65 million. Hanks, fresh off all that "Forrest Gump" success, was no doubt a pivotal part of getting many moviegoers into theaters to see "Apollo 13," but the true allure here was seeing a historic moment of American history rendered as a massive film. You don't need to explain to people in the marketing what the titular mission of "Apollo 13" means — everybody and their grandmother was well aware of it. That kind of built-in recognition is what informs sizeable box office hits, including ones that get nominated for scores of Oscars. It's not every day you see a box office performer like that, but then again, it's also rare for movie stars of Hanks' caliber to emerge.

The world of big-screen animation will always be defined by a time before and after "Toy Story." The first feature-length computer-animated movie to ever grace theaters, "Toy Story" was making technological history, not to mention being the first collaboration between Disney and Pixar. Today, it's fairly obvious that "Toy Story" was destined for greatness given how so much of American cinema has been made in its shadow, but back in 1995, this was a brand new form of storytelling ... and audiences ate it up.

In its original theatrical release, "Toy Story" loudly heralded the arrival of computer animation as a force to be reckoned with thanks to it grossing $365.2 million worldwide. This put it ahead of the hand-drawn animated Disney film "Pocahontas" from the same year, while it came in behind only "Die Hard with a Vengeance" among all movies at the 1995 global box office. While it was far from the only element informing its enormous success, "Toy Story" did have the advantage of excellent timing in being one of the first Tom Hanks vehicles released after his Oscar-winning box office phenomenon "Forrest Gump." "Toy Story" continued this man's hot streak at the box office and signaled a new age for American animation.

Typically, movies released to theaters in late July are big blockbusters, like "The Lion King" or "Star Trek Beyond." Even back in the 1990s, conventional crowdpleasers like "Air Force One" or "George of the Jungle" were the de facto movies you'd expect to see on the big screen in the waning days of summertime. In other words, it's not when you'll typically find your big dramas. But in July 1998, "Saving Private Ryan" premiered well outside of the timeframe of awards season to unleash a grueling look at World War II on moviegoers. It was a bold release strategy that could've seen the title getting swallowed up by bigger blockbusters. However, as history has proven, "Saving Private Ryan" ended up excelling in this unique release strategy.

Grossing $485 million worldwide, "Saving Private Ryan" managed to secure $216.3 million in North America alone. It suck around for ages in this territory, buoyed by good word of mouth, with "Ryan" managing to stay in wide release for 15 consecutive weeks. Even better, it managed to set multiple box office records that would endure for ages. One of these included being the biggest war movie ever domestically, an achievement it would hold until "American Sniper" blew up in wide release in 2015. It was also the number one movie of 1998 domestically, the last time an R-rated title would top the yearly domestic box office for over a decade until "American Sniper" also swooped in and took that record away.

In retrospect, you'd think there'd be no doubt that "Toy Story 2" would be a massive hit given how beloved the original film was. Still, "Toy Story 2" had an enormously troubled production that saw it experience every tortured problem possible, from almost getting deleted to getting upgraded to a theatrical release at the last minute. Plus, big-screen animated sequels were nowhere near as common in 1999 as they are today. It was fair to wonder if moviegoers would shell out cash to see a follow-up in theaters rather than wait for home video.

The box office results for "Toy Story 2," which brought back Tom Hanks along with the rest of the first film's voice cast, promptly answered whether audiences had any interest in a sequel. Grossing $511.3 million worldwide, "Toy Story 2" was a global phenomenon that managed to leave its predecessor's global box office total in the dust. Even more impressively, it managed to be nearly as big on opening weekend as massive live-action blockbusters of the 1990s like "The Lost World: Jurassic Park." Rather than coming off as a rehash of the original "Toy Story," "Toy Story 2" registered as a welcome visit with old friends. With this feature, Hanks secured another animated hit on his resume, and the financial viability of animated sequels was solidified.

In retrospect, the idea of "The Da Vinci Code" being something loaded with controversy seems more than a tad silly. In the context of history, "The Da Vinci Code" was just one of several 2000s movies aping old-school adventure and treasure hunting movies, like "National Treasure" or even "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." It has about as much hefty things to say about theology as "Crystal Skull" did about astronomy. But at the time of its release, "The Da Vinci Code" was drowning in controversy, with various Catholic and Christian institutions taking umbrage with how the plot concerned the idea that Jesus Christ impregnated a woman.

All the fury and controversy only heightened the attention on this project, which was already on the general public's radar given the popularity of its source material, Dan Brown's novel of the same name. The allure of seeing something popular and quasi-dangerous on the big screen, not to mention the presence of Tom Hanks as protagonist Robert Langdon, drove "The Da Vinci Code" to a massive $767.8 million worldwide gross. The #2 movie of 2006 at the global box office, "The Da Vinci Code" also managed to dethrone "Forrest Gump" as the biggest live-action movie Hanks has ever headlined. It can be difficult to understand or comprehend the controversy over "The Da Vinci Code" nowadays, but the gravity of its endless box office achievements will always be understandable.

With "Toy Story 4," the "Toy Story" saga wasn't just going to infinity and beyond. This series was also now going beyond the confines of a standard trilogy, a risky move for any franchise. Though positively received fourth movies — such as "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and "Avengers: Endgame" — exist, many of them are more on par with the likes of "Shrek Forever After" or "Terminator Salvation." These installments tend to indicate a series is struggling to maintain its creative momentum and is straining to be as relevant as it once was. Leave it to the "Toy Story" saga, then, to subvert expectations and deliver a well-reviewed fourth entry that also managed to take the series to new heights at the box office.

With $1.073 billion worldwide, "Toy Story 4" narrowly eclipsed its predecessor's global cume, an impressive feat given that "Toy Story 3" arrived as much more of a long-awaited event rather than as just another "Toy Story" title. Among Pixar's films at the global box office, "Toy Story 4" surpassed every entry in the studio's canon except for "Incredibles 2." "Toy Story 4" also grossed enough to register as the sixth-biggest animated movie ever at the worldwide box office. Though it had been nearly 25 years at this point, the animated saga Tom Hanks first appeared in back in 1995 was still going strong in 2019.