On the road to remaking just about every film put to screen comes an unexpected update from producer Brian Grazer. This man has been involved in Hollywood since the ‘70s, and he’s still working on high-profile gigs, like The Dark Tower movie, the Tom Cruise-led Mena, and Fox’s 24: Legacy series with Corey Hawkins. So, what’s on the docket for one of the busiest men in the business?
A remake of Splash, the 1984 film starring Tom Hanks as a man who falls in love with a mermaid — the same mermaid who saved his life after almost drowning in the ocean as a child.
During an interview with CNBC, correspondent Carl Quintanilla asked Grazer a hypothetical question about who he’d cast in the movie if it were being made today. He was shocked when he received this answer:
I’m actually gonna do Splash today, and I can’t say. I’m actually going to do it from the point of view of — I can’t say anything about it. There’s a movie star involved or gonna be involved. I haven’t announced it.
Grazer then confirmed this new take will be “a version of” his original treatment for Splash, which was titled Wet and told the story from the perspective of the mermaid. “I can’t tell you the twist,” Grazer added. Watch video of the interview below.
The original film was directed by Ron Howard (who recently helmed Hanks’ film, Inferno) and starred Daryl Hannah as the blonde-haired beauty of the deep. Splash, based on Grazer’s story, went on to gross close to $70 million in the U.S. and earn an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Two other Hanks movies are already getting reboots. One is Big, which was announced in 2014 for a TV treatment from Kevin Biegel and Mike Royce. The other is Bachelor Party, which ABC announced the same year for a small-screen anthology treatment.
