Tom Hanks' new movie Bridge of Spies was originally a vehicle for Gregory Peck and Alec Guinness in the mid-1960s.
The dramatic historical thriller, which is based on the real-life story of a Brooklyn lawyer caught up in the politics of the Cold War between Russia and the US, was pitched to studio bosses at MGM in 1965, but they felt the time wasn't right for such a hard-hitting film.
Tom revealed he didn't even know about his character James Donovan's story until the project crossed his path.
"I was fuelled with no pre-conceived knowledge of James Donovan," he told WENN. "I knew nothing about this story two years ago. That all came to me, as all good stories come to us, in a surprise package, because it was simply a piece of history that was so compelling personally for me.
"I was meeting with the Donovan family - two daughters and the son - and I found out something I never knew before. In 1965 Gregory Peck came after the story and he got Alec Guinness to agree to play Rudolf Abel (a Soviet intelligence officer arrested on charges of conspiracy by FBI agents in 1957). Peck was gonna play Donovan and they got Stirling Silliphant to try and write the script. And then MGM at the time said, 'No, I don't think we're gonna tell the story!' And I didn't even know that, so we weren't the first to do this."
Director Steven Spielberg believes the Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis made the studio heads wary: "Tensions were too taut between the Soviets and the United States of America for MGM to get into the politics of the story. And Greg Peck's previous movie (Arabesque) was soft at the box office!"
In the new feature film, which is released in America on 16 October (15), British actor Mark Rylance plays Rudolf Abel. Bridge of Spies has picked up considerable early Oscars buzz and other stars that make up part of the cast include Amy Ryan and Alan Alda.
