Tom Hanks explains how his new movie Finch has taken on new meaning since COVID pandemic

Finch goes on to create a robot, Jeff (Caleb Landry Jones) with a view to providing care for his beloved canine companion when he no longer can.

Set in a world left virtually uninhabitable by the results of a solar flare, Apple TV+'s film resonates in a different way now to when the team began work on it, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanks told press including RadioTimes.com.

"When we made this film – well before the words ‘COVID-19’ were even in the vernacular – we were making a bit of science-fiction, and a glorious bit of science-fiction, familiar in many ways (there’s been a lot of ‘last human beings left on planet Earth’ type films before), with the new wrinkle of Seamus the dog [who plays Goodyear] – that was new," the actor said.

"Now, after all of this – if you can be so bold as to suggest – there is a sort of theoretical worst case scenario here. Let’s imagine that the virus was even stronger and more deadly than it was," he continued. "It’s interesting – I saw the movie not too long ago and there’s a scene where he [Finch] explains to Jeff what happened, how society broke down, and it goes back to something almost as benign as a solar flare. That’s almost reassuring – that’s not a slow-moving contagion that goes about and kills everybody.

"And yet, at the same time, there was the issue about recollections about how society broke down and I think that ends up being perhaps closer to behavioural theory than science-fiction: we have seen elements in which ignorance and irrationality and passions and opinion have held more sway in popular behaviour and that there is evidence of, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take care of myself and I don’t care what anybody else says or thinks.’

"We carry it to a far, murderous extreme in the movie by way of our flashbacks, but it’s not hard to see that somehow, ‘Ah, we might be a little accurate in the study of human behaviour under such circumstances.’" Hanks said. "This from a movie that we started long before the idea of a worldwide lockdown and as many morbidities that have come along with COVID-19 could’ve even been imagined."

"If you had told us when we were on the set shooting this film that during the post-production people would be in lockdown, be in masks and people wouldn’t be able to travel across borders, we would’ve thought, ‘Well, let’s make that movie.’ I’m glad we didn’t."

You can watch the trailer for Finch below.

Additional reporting by Jo Berry.

Finch arrives on Apple TV+ on 5th November. If you're looking for something else to watch, check out our TV Guide. Visit our Movies hub for all the latest news.