How Ron Howard’s ‘Splash’ Was Almost ‘Killed’ by a Famous Producer
Imagine a world where Tom Hanks didn’t fall in love with a mermaid? It’s a world where Daryl Hannah‘s career never took off; one where Hanks doesn’t make the leap to movies; where Ron Howard‘s budding tenure as a director gets derailed; and where “Madison” doesn’t become a popular girl’s name. Such would be our world if 1984’s Splash never got made. And in a new interview with Vulture, Howard explains how that grim reality almost came to be.
“There was this movie that Herb Ross was going to direct called Mermaid with Jessica Lange in the prime of her career as the mermaid and Warren Beatty as the human, the above-grounder,” Howard said. “And the tremendous Ray Stark was the producer, and he was trying to kill our movie.” Stark was the Hollywood powerhouse behind films from 1961’s West Side Story to 1989’s Steel Magnolias.
At the time, Howard and Brian Grazer (Splash’s producer and Howard’s longtime production partner) were shopping the film around to different studios.
“They were all turning it down, and they kept saying, ‘It doesn’t know what tone it is. It’s fantasy, it’s verbal comedy, it’s physical comedy.’ And I kept thinking, What the hell is wrong with that? That’s a blend that works. It’s Frank Capra. Are you kidding me?” said Howard.
Ultimately, Howard and Grazer found a studio that would take it on: Disney. Howard told Vulture that Disney was willing to “take on the challenge” because they were at a low point (“They’d been making movies like Gus, about a field-goal-kicking mule”). But once Ray Stark heard about Splash, he tried to “bully” Grazer into shutting it down.
“He said, ‘I’m going to ruin you,’ literally,” said Howard. “And then he said, ‘Tell you what — I’ll let you be in my movie. You can co-produce it with me. Drop yours.’ Brian, without a lot of money in his bank account, had the courage and fortitude to stay with it, even though Disney was a real B-studio at the time.”
Splash was the first film on Touchstone Pictures, a brand Disney created for films targeted at an adult audience. And Disney’s risk paid off: the movie made $69 million on an $11 million budget, the tenth-highest-grossing film of the year.
And Stark’s concerns were also validated: after Splash’s success, Mermaid was canceled before it could be made.
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