Tom Hanks Envied Kong’s Hanks

The following article was published on December 12, 2005 on SciFi.com:

Tom Hanks Envied Kong’s Hanks
King Kong co-star Colin Hanks told SCI FI Wire that his father, Oscar winner Tom Hanks, was both proud and jealous that he’d landed a role in Peter Jackson’s epic remake and got to shoot it in New Zealand. The younger Hanks plays Preston, assistant and would-be moral conscience of Carl Denham (Jack Black), the overzealous director whose effort to make a movie results in deadly encounters with a giant gorilla named Kong.

“He was very excited,” Colin Hanks said of his father during a news conference in New York. “I had actually told my sister first, because she is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and she screamed for about a good five minutes. And then he actually called me, and he left a message on my voice mail. He was singing, ‘King Kong!’ And he said, ‘You don’t remember this, but there was a TV show in the 1960s called King Kong.’ He was unbelievably excited.”

Colin Hanks (Roswell) added: “In our correspondence while I was in New Zealand, I was telling him about the experience of what it was like making this movie and the people I was making it with. And he said, ‘As a father, I’m very, very happy for you. As an actor, I’m unbelievably jealous.'” King Kong opens on Dec. 14 and is being distributed by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.