Anybody who has seen the 2000 movie ‘Castaway’ will know Tom Hanks (Chuck Noland) didn’t survive alone. His good friend ‘Wilson’ was by his side for much of the movie. But whatever happened to ‘Wilson’ after the movie finished filming?
Most of Castaway was filmed on Monuriki, an uninhabited island situated off the coast of Viti Levu in the Fiji Islands, South Pacific Ocean. This 0.4 square km volcanic island is surrounded by coral and various other islands. The other islands were edited out in the movie to make it look like Tom Hanks was truly stranded. It was on the island that Chuck created his companion ‘Wilson’, using his bloody hand on a volleyball that he found.
Where Is Wilson Today?
As with most movies, numerous versions of the prop existed, for ‘Wilson’, twenty were created. However, many of these were discarded because of errors in the finger painting.
In the final scenes of the movie, one of the balls was weighed down with weights in order for it to sink beneath the waves. Robert Miller, the property master, remembers the filming well:
“That was special, it aged the most. I don’t think we did many takes of that scene,” he said. “It was the end of his journey.”
Unfortunately, it appears the final Wilson didn’t end up in a museum, memorabilia store, or in an auction. Instead, that particular volleyball found its way to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, or at best, floating around in the Pacific Ocean somewhere.
However, one of the original Wilson volleyball props did survive. Whether this particular ball saw any screen time or not we don’t know. The volleyball was sold at auction for $18,500 to the ex-CEO of FedEx Office, Ken May.