Cast Away - Production

Production

The film was not shot consecutively. Hanks gained fifty pounds during pre-production to make him look like a pudgy, middle-aged man. 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. 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. 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. Although it is identified by Kelly after Chuck's return as being "about 600 miles south of the Cook Islands," there is actually no land between the southern-most Cook Islands of Mangaia and Antarctica.

The producers made up a list of seemingly useless items that would be in the packages that Noland recovered: party dress, ice skates, divorce papers, video tapes, and other sundries. They turned this over to a group of survival experts who decided how the protagonist might be able to use them.