‘Greyhound 2’: Tom Hanks Officially Reveals Plot Details for Upcoming WWII Sequel!!

Tom Hanks is basically Mister World War II at this point and, not content with a jaw-dropping 20-part documentary series on the entirety of the war, he’s also busy at work on a sequel to one of the most surprising hits of his career. From Saving Private Ryan to Band of Brothers, The Pacific,Masters of the Air, and his new HISTORY Channel docuseries World War II With Tom Hanks, Hanks knows what audiences love about seeing 1939 to 1945 depicted on screen and now, Hanks has revealed what fans can expect from the sequel to his 2020 smash hit.

Speaking with TIME, Hanks offered a new update on the second Greyhound movie, which he recently filmed in Australia. The first film, adapted from C.S. Forester’s 1955 novel The Good Shepherd, starred Hanks as U.S. Navy Commander Ernest Krause as he led an Allied convoy across the Atlantic while being hunted by German U-boats. According to Hanks, the sequel will dig into a different but related question: what it actually means to survive.

“The first Greyhound was all about dealing with the backbone-crushing stress of the job at hand,” Hanks said. “The second one, what we’re establishing is: What is the difference between surviving and not surviving?”

What Will ‘Greyhound 2’ Be About?

Hanks also revealed that the sequel takes inspiration from a real-life naval survival story, centered on a ship that endured an almost unthinkable series of attacks in a single morning.

“We based much of the second film on a true story about a ship that, completely by itself, somehow survived 19 different bombings within the course of an early morning,” Hanks said. “What is survival? Survival is perseverance. Survival is behavior and procedure and an all-encompassing faith in the ability to solve one damn thing after another. Isn’t that kind of like life itself?”

The cast for the Greyhound sequel has not yet been fully detailed, Hanks is returning after writing and starring in the first film. The original Greyhound cast included Stephen Graham (Boiling Point) as Charlie Cole, Rob Morgan (Mudbound) as George Cleveland, Elisabeth Shue (The Karate Kid) as Evelyn, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer) as Lopez, and Karl Glusman (Civil War) as Eppstein.