The Addams Family had been a big hit for Paramount in 1991, the studio buying up the film off beleaguered Orion Pictures mid-way through shooting (that whole story can be found here). What she didn’t yet have was a director, but she had one in mind. Lansing had her project, and it came with Tom Hanks ready-attached to it. WB agreed to trade projects, topping up the deal with $400,000 that it also paid to Paramount. would eventually make with Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal in the lead roles. It had its eye on the screenplay to Executive Decision, a film Warner Bros. That said, Paramount had something Warner Bros. The script and rights were owned by Warner Bros., which had put the brakes on it, fearing it veered too closely to the Oscar-winning Rain Man. The immediate issue was that Forrest Gumpwasn’t a Paramount project. But the guts of the film were there, and Lansing wanted it. She described it as “the most beautiful script I’ve ever read.” In those early days, there were fantastical elements to the draft, such as animated characters accompanying Forrest on his travels and a journey into space. And one night, she happened upon Eric Roth’s adaptation of Winston Groom’s 1986 book, Forrest Gump. Lansing thus read lots and lots of scripts.
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