• Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump: At an early age, Forrest is deemed to have a below-average IQ of 75. He has an endearing character and shows devotion to his loved ones and duties, character traits that bring him into many life-changing situations. Along the way, he encounters many historical figures and events throughout his life. Hanks also briefly plays Nathan Bedford Forrest in The Birth of a Nation scene.
• Robin Wright as Jenny Curran: Forrest's childhood friend with whom he immediately falls in love, and never stops loving throughout his life. A victim of child sexual abuse at the hands of her bitter, widowed father, Jenny embarks on a different path from Forrest, leading a self-destructive life and becoming part of the hippie movement in California in the 1960s and the following Me Decade's sex and drug culture of the 1970s. She re-enters Forrest's life at various times in adulthood. Jenny eventually becomes a waitress in Savannah, Georgia, where she lives in an apartment with her (and Forrest's) son, Forrest Jr. They eventually get married, but soon afterward she dies from complications due to an unnamed disease. This unknown disease was intended by Winston Groom, the author of the original novel, to be Hepatitis C, itself an "unknown virus" until defined in April 1989, although some of the makers of the film have said that they intended for the unknown disease to have been HIV/AIDS.
• Gary Sinise as Lieutenant Dan Taylor: Forrest and Bubba Blue's platoon leader during the Vietnam War, whose ancestors have died in every U.S. war and who regards it as his destiny to do the same. After losing his legs in an ambush and being rescued against his will by Forrest, he is initially bitter and antagonistic toward Forrest for leaving him a "cripple" and denying him his family's destiny, falling into a deep depression. He later serves as Forrest's first mate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, gives most of the orders, becomes wealthy with Forrest, and regains his will to live. He ultimately forgives and thanks Forrest for saving his life. By the end of the film, he is engaged to be married to his fiancée Susan and is sporting "magic legs" – titanium alloy prosthetics that allow him to walk again.
• Mykelti Williamson as Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue: Bubba was originally supposed to be the senior partner in the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, but due to his death in Vietnam, their platoon leader, Dan Taylor, took his place. The company posthumously carried his name. Forrest later gave Bubba's mother (Marlena Smalls) Bubba's share of the business. Throughout filming, Williamson wore a lip attachment to create Bubba's protruding lip.
• Sally Field as Mrs. Gump: Forrest's mother. Field reflected on the character, "She's a woman who loves her son unconditionally. ... A lot of her dialogue sounds like slogans, and that's just what she intends."

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The film is based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Both center on the character of Forrest Gump. However, the film primarily focuses on the first eleven chapters of the novel before skipping ahead to the end of the novel, with the founding of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and the meeting with Forrest Jr. In addition to skipping some parts of the novel, the film adds several aspects to Gump's life that do not occur in the novel, such as his needing leg braces as a child and his run across the United States.

Gump's core character and personality are also changed from the novel; among other things, his film character is less of a savant – in the novel, while playing football at the university, he fails craft and gym but receives a perfect score in an advanced physics class he is enrolled in by his coach to satisfy his college requirements. The novel also features Gump as an astronaut, a professional wrestler, and a chess player.

The book had a bidding war regarding an adaptation even before publication, with Wendy Finerman and Steve Tisch acquiring them by joining forces with Warner Bros., where Finerman's husband Mark Canton was president of production. Groom was paid $500,000 and also wrote the first three first drafts of the screenplay, which leaned closer to the events of the novel. After Rain Man told the story of a savant, Warner lost interest in the picture, and by 1990 the project was in turnaround. Finerman contacted Columbia Pictures, who went on to reject it, while hiring Eric Roth to rewrite the script. Roth and Finerman kept in contact with Groom to ensure the script was historically accurate. Roth delivered a screenplay in 1992, which Paramount Pictures chairwoman Sherry Lansing liked enough to bring the project to her studio, who acquired the rights from Warner in exchange for the script for Executive Decision.

Ivan Reitman, Penny Marshall and Terry Gilliam passed on the project before Robert Zemeckis was hired. Barry Sonnenfeld was attached to the film, but left to direct Addams Family Values.
John Travolta was the original choice to play the title role and said that passing on the role was a mistake. Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Matthew Broderick were also considered for the role. Sean Penn had stated in an interview that he had been second choice for the role, but would later portray a character with a disability in the 2001 film I Am Sam. Hanks revealed that he signed on to the film after an hour and a half of reading the script. He initially wanted to ease Forrest's pronounced Southern accent, but was eventually persuaded by director Robert Zemeckis to portray the heavy accent stressed in the novel. Hanks also said it took him three days producing unusable footage in order to learn how to play the role. Winston Groom, who wrote the original novel, describes the film as ha…

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Produced on a budget of $55 million, Forrest Gump opened in 1,332 theaters in the United States and Canada on Wednesday, July 6, 1994, and grossed more than $8 million in its first two days before expanding on Friday to 1,595 theaters and grossing $24,450,602 in its opening weekend, Paramount's biggest opening non-holiday weekend gross, surpassing the record set by The Addams Family. Motion picture business consultant and screenwriter Jeffrey Hilton suggested to producer Wendy Finerman to double the P&A (film marketing budget) based on his viewing of an early print of the film. The budget was immediately increased, in line with his advice. In its opening weekend, the film placed first at the US box office, narrowly beating The Lion King, which was in its fourth week of release. For the first twelve weeks of release, the film was in the top 3 at the US box office, topping the list 5 times, including in its tenth week of release, when it surpassed Raiders of the Lost Ark as Paramount's highest grossing film in the United States and Canada. Paramount removed the film from release in the United States when its gross hit $300 million in January 1995, and it was the second-highest-grossing film of the year, behind The Lion King with $305 million. The film was reissued on February 17, 1995, after the Academy Awards nominations were announced. After the reissue in 1,100 theaters, the film grossed an additional $29 million in the United States and Canada, bringing its total to $329.7 million, making it the third-highest-grossing film at that time behind only E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 78.5 million tickets in the US and Canada in its initial theatrical run.

The film was the fastest grossing Paramount film to pass $100 million (18 days), $200 million (46 days; fourth fastest in history), and $300 million (193 days) in box office receipts (at the time of its release). After reissues, the film has gross receipts of $330,252,182 in the U.S. and Canada and $347,693,217 in international markets for a total of $677,945,399 worldwide. Ultimately, it finished as the fourth highest grossing film of the 1990s in the United States and Canada.

Even with such revenue, the film was known as a "successful failure"; due to distributors' and exhibitors' high fees, Paramount's "losses" clocked in at $62 million, leaving executives realizing the necessity of better deals. This has also been associated with Hollywood accounting, where expenses are inflated to minimize profit sharing.

Forrest Gump held the record for being the highest-grossing Paramount film until it was taken by Titanic three years later in 1997. However, it remained the highest-grossing film solely distributed by Paramount until it was surpassed by Shrek the Third 13 years later in 2007.

For 12 years, it remained as the highest-grossing film starring Tom Hanks; it was surpassed in 2006 by The Da Vinci Code.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 157 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's consensus reads: "Tom Hanks' rigorously earnest performance keeps Forrest Gump sincere even when it gets glib with American history, making for a whimsical odyssey of debatable wisdom but undeniable heart." At the website Metacritic, the film ea…

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