Cast Away

Cast Away began in 1994 when Fox executive Elizabeth Gabler told me that Tom Hanks thought there might be a movie in the story of a modern man stranded on a desert island...which Tom jokingly called 'Chuck of the Jungle'. So begins William Broyles, Jr.'s fascinating introduction, written exclusively for this book, about the process and challenges inherent in writing a screenplay that was not, by design, going to have a lot of dialogue in it, and about his collaboration with two extraordinarily gifted artists, actor Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis. Broyles's introduction shows how a movie and its story evolve, shift, and shape while the creators grapple with all manner of internal and external choices: from developing what was Tom Hanks's idea into a story, and building a narrative structure and thematic threads into a screenplay, to researching the details of the specific - and ironic - situation of a FedEx executive stranded on a desert island.