12 months. Michael Bay was hired as director, but left the project because he could not resolve how to approach the material. Carin Sage, a junior agent at the Creative Artists Agency representing Tom Hanks, gave Hanks the script and he was immediately interested, meeting with Gordon and Levinsohn. Hanks shared the script with Steven Spielberg as the pair had wanted to work together for some time; sharing a personal interest in WWII, Spielberg agreed to direct. Rodat thought that Paramount would cancel the project after the studio purchased two other WWII-era scripts, Combat and With Wings as Eagles, with popular actors Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached, respectively. Having secured the involvement of two of the highest-paid and most successful actors and directors, Gordon recounted telling Paramount executives, "OK, you have [Schwarzenegger] on one project and [Willis] on the other. How about [Hanks] and [Spielberg]? Ha, ha, ha!" Describing what interested him about the project, Spielberg said, "so what you're doing is sending eight people out, all of whom have parents, to rescue one boy and send him back to his mom when any or all of these kids, along the mission route, could be killed. That was the central tug that made me want to tell the story." Spielberg had a lifelong interest in WWII, having made war films as a teenager because "it was the seminal conversation inside my family. My parents talked about the Holocaust and they talked about combat and war. And I was born knowing this. My dad was a veteran... he had many veterans over to the house, and I became absolutely obsessed... based on my father's stories, recollections, and also based on all the WWII movies." He described the project as a tribute to his father. With Spielberg involved, DreamWorks Pictures, which he co-founded, became involved as a financier, and his company, Amblin Entertainment, as a production company. Spielberg's clout effectively removed Gordon and Levinsohn from the production, having no creative input, equity, or rights, but receiving a producer's credit and one-off payment. Levinsohn said, "you just know going in what the score is... I guess it's unspoken that when you hire [Spielberg] you're not going to be on the set making decisions." DreamWorks hired Ian Bryce to replace them. In April 1997, Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount's parent company Viacom, had Spielberg flip a coin to determine the film's distribution rights.