Tom Hanks belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church. He was previosuly Catholic and LDS.
I was kind of pondering this question myself; who and why would someone make a movie like this that is so offensive to many Catholics???
I read a little bit about Tom Hanks.
From what I have read, it seems like he has tried several different forms of Christianity at different times in his life, including Catholicism and Methodism, and was once a Mormon (his mother was a Mormon).
Tom Hanks married a woman who was Greek Orthodox.
I didn’t research Ron Howard.
I have to specualte also the Hollywood mindset has to do something about it.
The Hays Code which was the moral code that Hollywood adopted in the 1930s and which regulated (with financial penalties) the mainstream Hollywood film industry since the 1930s to 1954 was written by a Jesuit priest and a Catholic layman, and Hollywood accepted it only after the Catholic Church in America played a key role in a boycott of the Hollywood film industry around 1933.
Hollywood has always peddled sex and, later on, graphic violence in their movies because sex and graphic violence sells.
So the Catholic Church (at least in the first half of the 20th century and I think to a much lesser extent less vocally now IMO) opposed immorality at the movies.
So, as with many films, this is kind of Hollywood getting back at the Catholic Church.
You add to that Hollywood power, ego, the fact that Anti-Catholicism remains strong in the United States (organizations like the KKK and the Black Legion have lost their power, but culturally speaking, Anti-Catholicism appears to have reached a dizzying new height in 21st Century America.
I think this new zenith of Anti-Catholicism is fueled to a large and popular degree by the clergy sex abuse scandal in this decade, although Anti-Catholicism has always been a force in America), Utilitarian and Neo-Nietschean philosophies and modes of thinking that dominate the university and business worlds in the USA, and also the fact that people disagree on issues of Catholic moral teaching, as well as plain old bigotry and the fact that Christianity, and especially in the United States, Catholicism, serves as a whipping post for some, there is a market present to cater to and sell Anti-Catholicism through films and television programs and other media (newspapers, video games, comic books).
There have been a whole bunch of Anti-Catholic films; and there will be a whole lot more in the future.
Anti-Catholicism has become a staple part of modern American entertainment, even though Catholics have contributed much in the past and contribute much now to the pluralistic Democracy we live in.
Hollywood films have displayed blatant bigotry in the past, especially most noticeably against racial minorities (African-Americans in films like
Birth of a Nation and other films, movie cartoons; Asians and Asian-Americans).
It looks like Catholics and Catholicism and too a smaller degree, other Christians denominations, especially conservative Protestant sects (e.g., Evangelicals) have largely taken their place.
The other thing I found interesting was that the Directors of these films say they are purely works of fiction, yet they use the names of and / or portray real Catholic ecclesial organizations like Opus Dei and the Magisterium.
Read more about the Hays Code in a prior post I made:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=221769