Tom Hanks may have made his stance clear on his movies being sent straight to streaming, but his last two efforts have found massive success on the small screen nonetheless. AppleTV+ acquired the rights to World War II drama Greyhound for $70 million after Sony sold it off, while Paul Greengrass’ elegiac Western News of the World was released internationally on Netflix and found a pretty big audience on the platform.
The beloved actor’s back catalogue has also experienced something of a resurgence on the world’s most popular streaming service, with The Da Vinci Code and Catch Me If You Can both troubling the Top 10 most-watched list in recent months despite the vast gulf in quality between the two projects. However, nobody can deny that the latest Hanks film to arrive on Netflix is a true stone-cold classic, with Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan now available.
The highest-grossing World War II movie ever made until Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk came along, the harrowing drama hauled in $482 million at the box office and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning five including Best Director and Best Cinematography, although it remains one of the most controversial upsets in Oscars history that it lost out on Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love.
Saving Private Ryan‘s Omaha Beach opener is one of the most incredible and visceral depictions of war ever committed to celluloid, and it’s comfortably one of both Spielberg and Tom Hanks‘ very best movies. More than 20 years later and still it hasn’t lost any of its power, and it’s now in with a real shot at ascending up Netflix’s viewership charts over the coming days and weeks.
