Tom Hanks knows AI could recreate Woody’s voice, and he is not pretending that makes for a comforting bedtime story. As Toy Story 5 arrives with a franchise-best $312 million worldwide opening, attention has already moved to the obvious next question: if Disney makes Toy Story 6, does it actually need Hanks in the booth?
The answer, according to Hanks, is more complicated than fans of the 31-year-old franchise may want it to be.
Why Hanks says another Toy Story has to earn its place
Hanks, who returns as Woody in Toy Story 5, told Entertainment Weekly that the existence of a beloved title is not reason enough to keep adding chapters.
“If you’re gonna do another ‘Toy Story,’ it better be worthwhile,” Hanks said. “It better be great. You better be examining some theme that is not just dragging it out because people like the title. I mean, it is a huge corporate business without a doubt, I’m not gonna discount that. But unless it’s good, new, fresh, there’s no reason to do it at all.”
That is a fairly direct note from the man who has voiced Woody since the first Toy Story film. That gets to the tension underneath the whole conversation: audiences still care, Disney still has a giant business, and nobody involved wants the series to feel like it is being kept alive because the merch aisle remains healthy.
How Disney could bring Woody back without him
Hanks also acknowledged something more unsettling. After more than three decades of recording Woody’s dialogue, Disney has an enormous library of his voice stored digitally. In theory, artificial intelligence could use those recordings to create new lines, new scenes, and perhaps a new Woody performance without Hanks physically returning.
“Time is undefeated,” Hanks said. “The question would be whether or not we could cobble together some version of me. Every word we have ever recorded in time in ‘Toy Story’ is on digital media somewhere, so they could put together anything they would want.”
Hanks and Tim Allen, his longtime co-star who voices Buzz Lightyear, both called the idea “a scary thought.” That reaction makes sense. Woody and Buzz are not just files in a vault, even if, technically, they are now also that. Their appeal comes from years of specific performances, timing, warmth, and all the small choices actors make before technology steps in and tries to claim the result.
What Hanks has said before about AI actors
This is not the first time Hanks has warned about where AI is headed. During a 2023 appearance on The Adam Buxton Podcast, he said AI and deepfake tools could make it possible for an actor’s career to continue after death, whether or not the actor has anything new to contribute.
He pointed to Robert Zemeckis’ 2004 Christmas film The Polar Express as an early example of Hollywood storing extensive digital information about an actor’s appearance.
“The first time we did a movie that had a huge amount of our own data locked in a computer, literally what we looked like, was a movie called ‘The Polar Express,’” Hanks said. “We saw this coming, we saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones from inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. That has only grown a billion-fold since then and we see it everywhere.”
Why the issue is bigger than Toy Story 6
Hanks said the technology could now allow him to appear as a younger version of himself in multiple projects. The issue is no longer just whether a studio can do it, but who controls the result and what audiences are actually watching.
“Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deep fake technology,” he said. “I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but performances can go on and on and on and on. Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone. And it’s going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That’s certainly an artistic challenge but it’s also a legal one.”
That legal and artistic challenge now sits inside one of Hollywood’s most emotionally durable franchises. Toy Story 5 is currently playing in theaters nationwide, and if a sixth film does happen, the question may not be whether Woody can return. It may be what kind of return audiences are willing to accept.
