We’re definitely in uncharted waters now.
As the ongoing health crisis continues to bring chaos to release dates and the theater industry at large, Tom Hanks‘ upcoming submarine movie, Greyhound, has made the surprising jump to Apple TV+, according to Deadline. The film, which is a passion project of Hanks that he wrote himself, was originally set to premiere on May 7 before it joined the first batch of films to delay its release dates when the pandemic began surging in March. While Sony was hoping to release Greyhound on Father’s Day — what’s more of a dad movie that Tom Hanks fighting Nazi submarines — it didn’t take long for the studio to realize that date wasn’t happening, and the film was “quietly shopped in stealthy fashion” to streaming services.
Normally, this is where Netflix swoops in and snatches up films from studios staring down grim box office predictions. But in a surprising move, Apple landed the Hanks film with an estimated $70 million bid as the streaming service begins an aggressive expansion into acquiring film and TV projects. This latest move also puts Hanks at the center of another story revolving around the pandemic. The actor and his wife Rita Wilson were the first celebrities to receive a diagnosis for COVID-19, and they chronicled their experience and thankful recovery on social media.
Here’s the official synopsis for Greyhound:
In the early days of the war, Navy Capt. Ernest Krause (Hanks) is entrusted with his first command of a U.S. destroyer (code name: Greyhound) protecting an Allied convoy of 37 ships as it crosses the Atlantic. Things don’t go as planned, of course, and the Allies find themselves fending off packs of Nazi submarines in murky waters, while a stoic Hanks vows to “bring hell down from on high” on the attackers.
The Apple TV+ premiere date for Greyhound is not yet known.