Specifically, an eye watering $432,000 (AUD). Speaking of Wilson, the volleyball used in the film just sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at an auction earlier this month. The Wilson volleyball just sold for hundreds of thousands at an auction. It's now his "favorite character" in the movie. While on the island, Broyles came up with the character of Wilson after a volleyball washed up on the beach and he began talking to it. Wilson was inspired by a volleyball that washed up on the beach. It was going to be an emotional, spiritual one as well," he said.ĥ. "That's when I realised it wasn't just a physical challenge. While there, he speared stingrays and ate them raw and learnt to open coconuts. To help research for movie, screenwriter William Broyles took part in a survival camp where he spent days alone on an island near Mexico's Sea of Cortez. The film's screenwriter actually stranded himself on an island for research. While Hanks recovered from the infection, production had to be shut down for three weeks. "I went to the doctor who took one look and said, 'I have to put you in the hospital because we have to get this infection out of you before it poisons your blood and you die.'" I didn't know it, I just thought I had a sore," he continued. "I got an infection from a cut and it was eating its way through my leg. I was there for three days with something that, believe it or not, almost killed me," Hanks told the BBC in 2009. Hanks had a close brush with death when a cut to his leg saw him rushed to the hospital during production in Fiji. "I just thought, 'What happens if that goes down?'"ĭirector Robert Zemeckis and screenplay writer Bill Broyles helped form the rest of the movie. Speaking during The Hollywood Reporter's roundtable, the 65-year-old said he had the idea for the film when he was "reading an article about FedEx, and I realised that 747s filled with packages fly across the Pacific three times a day." You never know when inspiration can hit and for Tom Hanks it was when he was reading a news article about the US transport company.
The idea for the film came from a news article about FedEx.