Hanks Directing Hbo Miniseries On Space Program

Sure, ask Tom Hanks to take a seat on the space shuttle, and he’ll be there in a heartbeat.

“Yeah, I’d go,” shrugged the executive producer, guiding spirit, occasional writer and director of the 12-hour HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon,” which will air over six Sundays starting April 5.

“But it takes $400 million to put one man in space,” Hanks told reporters here, “and I don’t think they need to put wisenheimers in orbit to come back with funny stories for the David Letterman show.”

And, anyway, he’s already been there, in a way, playing astronaut Jim Lovell in “Apollo 13,” Ron Howard’s 1995 film about the ill-fated moon mission.

Now, his boyhood passion for space flight and the race to the moon has led Hanks to make a dramatization of the entire Apollo program, from beginning (in the early ‘60s) to end (a decade later).

The cast includes over 30 stars, among them Oscar-winner Sally Field, Mark Harmon, Adam Baldwin, Cary Elwes, Gary Cole, Chris Isaak and Ann Magnuson.

As storytellers, he and his colleagues were determined to tell a true story “in a manner that is not just, ‘They went up, they pushed buttons, they said words, they picked up rocks, and they came home,”’ Hanks said.

“We are telling, we are translating, exactly what happened.”