20 Things You Didn't Know About Forrest Gump

2. Hollywood Accounting Ensured It Never Made A Profit...Officially

Hollywood accounting is the legally dubious means through which studios conceal their profits to avoid both paying taxes and paying out royalties payments to cast and crew members. After all, if there are no official profits, how can taxes or royalties possibly be paid?

Despite Forrest Gump making $678.2 million worldwide, Paramount used creative accounting, exaggerating the costs of production and marketing, to claim that the film never in fact made them a profit.

Though this didn't affect Tom Hanks' back-end payday, it did result in the novel's author Winston Groom being categorically ripped off.

Groom was paid a $350,000 fixed fee upfront and promised 3% of the film's net profits, yet because the film apparently didn't have any net profits (as opposed to gross profits), he didn't receive a cent.

Groom took legal action, which Paramount quickly remedied by paying out a seven-figure sum for the rights to his sequel novel Gump and Co., while promising him a percentage of the follow-up's box office.

Unfortunately for Groom, the sequel never got made, so he had to settle for the one-off rights payment instead.