Tom Hanks Breaks Silence on Chris Evans Replacing Toy Story’s Tim Allen for Lightyear

Now that Lightyear is out in theaters, fans can see the new era of the Toy Story franchise led by Chris Evans of the titular space ranger of Star Command. But Evans replacing original voice actor Tim Allen in the new Disney and Pixar film has not sat well with some fans of the Toy Story movies, including Allen’s longtime co-star Tom Hanks. The actor spoke out about his own disappointment in the casting decision shortly after Allen’s own comments to the public.

Hanks appears in Baz Luhrmann’s new Elvis biopic. The Independent asked Hanks if it was odd to be going up against Buzz Lightyear at the box office. Hanks revealed his hopes for a box office showdown with Allen.

“How about that? I actually wanted to go head-to-head with Tim Allen and then they didn’t let Tim Allen do it. I don’t understand that,” Hanks said.

When Evans voicing Buzz came up, Hanks said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Here’s the thing: I want to go back in the theatre with a bunch of strangers and leave with something in common. That’s what I want to do and, going to see a movie with [Allen] – I’m looking forward to that.”

Allen recently weighed in himself on Lightyear‘s box office performance. He told Extra, “Literally, the short answer is — I’ve stayed out of this because it has nothing to do, as I’ve said a long time ago, we talked about this many years ago, it came up in one of the sessions. I said what a fun movie that would be and that was, we spoke about it all. But the brass that did the first four movies is not … This is a whole new team that really had nothing to do with the first movies and they’re, as I said, I thought it was live-action. When they said they were doing a live-action, that it would mean real humans, not an animated thing.”

He continued, “Really, Hanks and I, well, there’s really no Toy Story Buzz without Woody …. I’m a plot guy. This was done in 1997, it seemed to be a big adventure story and, as I see, it’s not a big adventure story. It’s a wonderful story, it just doesn’t seem to have any connection to the toy.”

Lightyear is now playing in theaters.