Halle Berry, Tom Hanks play multiple parts in sweeping film 'Cloud Atlas'

“‘Cause like, quite frankly, eating pizza's fun, but doing this I think for everybody, this was part of being in the greatest repertory theater company imaginable.”

Considered one of the most expensive indie films ever made, the trio of directors struggled for years to secure the financing for the epic movie, which they took a divide-and-conquer approach to filming in 2011 in Germany, Spain and Scotland.

Top-lining the international cast that also includes Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon and Hugo Weaving, Hanks and Berry helped the project along by throwing their support behind it early.

“We knew that it was gonna be a Hail Mary pass in some degrees, 'cause it's not a sequel. It's a one-off. It's not a tentpole. It's not a franchise. They should've called it ‘Cloud Atlas 2' and everybody would have loved it,” Hanks said. “Now, that's the antithesis of what art should be. But, nonetheless, that's where we are.”

For the two-time Oscar winner, the final film has proved worth the wait.

“I've seen the movie three times now, and I'm always finding these new versions of the way they connected everybody to everybody else, in small ways, of details like what books they're reading and what things they're creating, but also then just the struggles that they're going through. At one point, I realized this is all about the battle of essentially being free, the whole essence of freedom,” Hanks said.

“I'm not saying that that was on the forefront of what we were doing every day, every day we were trying to figure out, well, ‘Is this a real moment? Does this make sense?' But ... the geniuses who were our bosses, they knew that. So they were sort of slowly shepherding to it and they kept adding these little dollops of another version of what that connection is. And I just think it's freaking extraordinary.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Warner Bros.