page_title: Cast Away
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: Cast Away / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: English: Monuriki Island, part of the Mamanuka Islands Group, Fiji Islands, Pacific Ocean.
context_page_description: Cast Away is a 2000 American survival drama film directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, and Nick Searcy. Hanks plays a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific, and the film depicts his desperate attempts to survive and return home. The film was released on December 22, 2000. It grossed $429 million worldwide, with Hanks nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 73rd Academy Awards.
context_section_description: The film's shooting occurred between 1998 and 2000, but was not shot consecutively. Hanks gained 50 pounds (23 kg) during pre-production, for the purpose of making his transformation more dramatic. After a majority of the film was shot, production was halted for a year so that he could lose the weight and grow his hair and beard to look like he had been living on the island for years. Another four-month production halt preceded the filming of the final return scenes. During the year-long hiatus, Zemeckis used the same film crew to make another film, What Lies Beneath.
  Cast Away was filmed on Monuriki, one of the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji. It is in a subgroup of the Mamanuca archipelago, which is sited off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. The island became a tourist attraction following the film's release.  After Chuck's return, it is identified by Kelly as being "about 600 miles [970 km] south of the Cook Islands," but there is actually no land between the southernmost Cook Islands of Mangaia and Antarctica.
  The film essentially begins and ends in the same location, on the Arrington Ranch in the Texas Panhandle south of the city of Canadian, Texas.
caption: The island of Monuriki
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