Toy Story 5 has crested a franchise record with a spectacular opening.
It's one of the most expensive animated movies ever.
Tom Hanks, who voices Woody, has related his concerns regarding AI replacing him in future sequels.
Tom Hanks has returned as Woody in Toy Story 5, which set a franchise record with its massive $312 million worldwide opening. The new instalment springs the threat of technology. Andrew Stanton has directed the film. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly after the film’s release, Hanks said any future installment must warrant its own existence. “If you’re gonna do another Toy Story, it better be worthwhile. It better be great. You better be examining some theme that is not just dragging it out because people like the title. I mean, it is a huge corporate business without a doubt, I’m not gonna discount that. But unless it’s good, new, fresh, there’s no reason to do it at all,” he told the portal. He also cautioned that AI might be used in latter instalments to recreate his voice, turning him redundant now.
“Time is undefeated,” he said. “The question would be whether or not we could cobble together some version of me. Every word we have ever recorded in time in Toy Story is on digital media somewhere, so they could put together anything they would want.” Hanks and his longtime co-star Tim Allen, who voices Buzz Lightyear, both agreed the idea is “a scary thought.
During his appearance on The Adam Buxton Podcast in 2023, Hanks suggested AI could prevent death in cutting off an actor's career. “The first time we did a movie that had a huge amount of our own data locked in a computer — literally what we looked like — was a movie called The Polar Express," Hanks said, referring to Robert Zemeckis’ 2004 Christmas movie. “We saw this coming, we saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones from inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. That has only grown a billion-fold since then and we see it everywhere.”
He also added, "Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deep fake technology. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but performances can go on and on and on and on. Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone. And it’s going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That’s certainly an artistic challenge but it’s also a legal one.”
