Adapted from Chris Van Allsburg's Caldecott Medal-winning 1985 picture book, The Polar Express tells the tale of a boy reaffirming his faith in Santa Claus via a magic train trip to the North Pole. And therein lies another reason for Warner to be antsy: The movie offers no franchise potential. Says Hanks, who also does virtual-actor duty as Mr. Claus himself, ''I don't see how you could come up with [a sequel]. It's a one-shot Hail Mary pass.'' Zemeckis insists this wasn't a fear factor. ''Nobody mentioned it,'' he reports. ''Nobody said, Hey, we're going to have to do, like, five of these.''
Nevertheless, to help limit its risk, the studio has reportedly split the financing roughly 50-50 with independent producer Steve Bing, known more for his tabloid-fodder tangles with ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley than for being a moviemaker. By one account, Bing escalated an initial buy-in offer of about $40 million to $80 million, keen for a bigger slice of potential profits. Zemeckis' deal is reportedly for 15 percent of the overall grosses; Hanks has kept his checkbook details out of the papers. By Nov. 12, the star, the filmmakers, the investors, and the studio suits should know whether they've bought into a Christmas gold mine, a lump of coal, or something in between.
How do you expand a 29-page picture book into a movie? That conundrum landed The Polar Express at development-hell junction early on. Hanks and his Playtone production company wangled the film rights in tandem with Castle Rock about five years back. Rob Reiner was set to direct a mix of live action and computer effects, but the package fell apart after script efforts didn't gel. They'd tried opening up the story with wife troubles for Santa and a sibling rivalry between Santa and the Conductor. Eventually, Hanks remembers, ''people threw their hands up.''
Then the actor sent the book to Zemeckis with the note, ''What do you think?'' It sparked the writer-director's impossible-dream predilections. He set to work on a fresh script with his Cast Away screenwriter, William Broyles Jr., a Vietnam vet and former Marine whose collaborative bond with Hanks dates back to 1995's Apollo 13. At first they imagined a movie nearly free of dialogue, but that didn't illuminate the theme of agnostic doubt very well. So Broyles invented three fellow travelers for the main boy from the book: ''Lonely Boy'' (eventually played in performance capture by Hanks' old Bosom Buddies costar, Peter Scolari); ''Know-It-All Boy'' (embodied by nerdy Zemeckis stock player Eddie Deezen); and a self-assured little girl (Nona Gaye). Broyles and Zemeckis also dreamed up a ghostly hobo who sleeps in a sling under the train, eventually acted and voiced by Hanks after he pitched Marlon Brando unsuccessfully on the part. To Broyles, ''it's very Woody Guthrie.''
As the script began to shape up in mid-2002, Zemeckis and his veteran effects guru, Ken Ralston, were simultaneously sussing out a visual strategy. Live action as a foundation was out. Among other headaches, Zemeckis explains, you'd never get principal photography done before the kids grew out of their roles, and besides, trying to film with a real train is ''dangerous, and there are huge insurance issues.'' After extensive tests, the performance-capture approach proved promising, even though the exact methodology eventually used didn't exist yet. Zemeckis dispatched Hanks to sell Van Allsburg on the technique, carefully arguing it wasn't a form of animation — an approach Van Allsburg specifically vetoed in his original book-rights contract. ''This story didn't have a bunch of goofy characters,'' says the author. ''It wasn't a hippo and a couple of penguins going to the North Pole. It was kids. You had to see the emotion of the story conveyed through their expressions, and you can't get that on a face through conventional animation.''
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