Studio Execs Wanted Ron Howard to Make ‘Splash’ Without the Mermaid
Do movie studio executives go out of their way to become punchlines?
Sometimes, it must seem that way to directors like Ron Howard. He remembers the pushback he got when he and Brian Glazer were shopping their film, Splash, the 1984 comedy in which everyman Tom Hanks falls in love with Darryl Hannah’s sweet mermaid. “We were going to every studio, they were all turning us down,” Howard told People. “And one said, ‘Does it really have to be a mermaid?’”
It was kinda like asking if Weekend at Bernie's really needed the dead guy. “We didn’t go with that company,” Howard said. “We decided, yeah, it really should be a mermaid.” Good thing, or otherwise, it would have been Sleepless in Seattle.
This article not your thing? Try these...
Howard isn’t alone. Some of Hollywood’s most successful films happened because their creators said no when executives tried to apply their business-school logic to perfectly wonderful screenplays. For example…
Groundhog Day
The Harold Ramis/Bill Murray comedy became a classic despite never explaining exactly why Murray’s Phil Connors was reliving the same day over and over. Some clever studio executive believed they had the fix, according to Flavorwire. Screenwriter Danny Rubin was asked to add a scene in which Phil’s ex-lover convinced a gypsy to put a curse on the beleaguered weatherman. Ramis refused to film it.
Back to the Future
When the original screenplay was being shopped, Disney wanted to cut out a famous plot point. “They told us that a mother falling in love with her son was not appropriate for a family film under the Disney banner,” explained co-writer Bob Gale. He and Bob Zemeckis ran into the opposite problem at Columbia, where executives believed the comedy needed a few more sex scenes. Lucky for everyone, Zemeckis’ Romancing the Stone came out and was a huge hit, giving him the clout to make Back to the Future the way he wanted.
Whiplash
The Oscar-nominated movie “ends with a kind of long drum solo, which was the whole point of making the movie,” director Damien Chazelle told The Wrap. “And the note was to get rid of all that. The note was written out — ‘He’s good at drumming. We get it.’”
Hidden Figures
A Fox Searchlight Studio exec asked Hidden Figures writer Theodore Melfi, “Do we have to have so much math?” The writer, who had penned a script about history-making mathematicians, feigned interest in the note, “but, no, it’s about math.”
The Magnificent Seven
Producer Todd Black was working on a remake of The Magnificent Seven. As creatives prepped the Western, “the biggest note in development and shooting it was, ‘Do they have to wear cowboy hats and have facial hair?’” Black replied, “Do you not want them not to have horses either?”