Tom Hanks Says Disney Might Not Need Him to Return to Voice Woody for ‘Toy Story 6’ Thanks to AI

The Oscar-winning actor has weighed in on the possibility of a sixth "Toy Story" installment — and he has thoughts on both sides of the debate.

Tom Hanks is speaking out about the prospect of returning as Woody for "Toy Story 6," and while he has laid out his own conditions for potentially reprising the role, he also believes "it's a scary thought" that he might not even need to be involved at all.

Hanks recently returned to the beloved franchise for "Toy Story 5," which premiered globally on June 19. Given the series' enduring popularity across more than three decades, questions about yet another installment have inevitably followed.

When asked whether he'd be open to coming back, Hanks didn't mince words.

"If you're gonna do another 'Toy Story,' it better be worthwhile," he told Entertainment Weekly. "It better be great. You better be examining some theme that is not just dragging it out because people like the title."

He went on to acknowledge the commercial reality of the franchise without dismissing it. "I mean, it is a huge corporate business without a doubt, I'm not gonna discount that," he said. "But unless it's good, new, fresh, there's no reason to do it at all."

At the same time, Hanks is under no illusions about where the power lies. Disney could simply choose not to call him back — and it wouldn't necessarily need to.

After 30-plus years of recording sessions, the studio has amassed a vast archive of his voice work as Woody, leaving the door open for AI to reconstruct new dialogue without any direct involvement from the actor.

"Time is undefeated," Hanks noted. "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."

It's a prospect that both Hanks and his longtime co-star Tim Allen — the voice of Buzz Lightyear — have described as "a scary thought." The concern isn't entirely new for Hanks, either.

During a 2023 appearance on "The Adam Buxton Podcast," he reflected on how AI and deepfake technology have steadily blurred the line between a living performer and a digital recreation.

"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, referencing the 2004 Christmas film.

"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."

He noted that the technology has already advanced to the point where he could pitch films in which he'd appear as a 32-year-old — and that anyone, in theory, could digitally recreate themselves at any age.

"I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that's it, but performances can go on and on and on and on," Hanks said.

"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."