Variety Magazine is reporting that they are interested in rebooting the movie “Splash’” with Channing Tatum and Jillian Bell in the starring roles.
But with Tatum as the merman, right?
The lifeblood of Hollywood is remakes and has been since its inception. No remakes would have meant no Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, no Some Like It Hot with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, no Scarface with Al Pacino, no Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland.
Sure, remakes are mainly crap but then all movies are mainly crap so it’s no big deal.
Famously, Splash made the name “Madison” popular for girls. (The mermaid named herself after Madison Avenue.)
Wonder what Channing Tatum’s merman will name himself, and if that name will become popular for boys?
Yesterday I saw the trailer for Sully, the movie about the pilot who landed a jet in the Hudson River. Tom Hanks, the original male lead in Splash, plays the pilot. You know what would be fun? If Darryl Hannah, the original mermaid in Splash, cameos. (Her character saved his life when he fell in the water as a little kid.)
I wouldn’t call the original a classic, so personally I don’t care terribly.
Though, on the other hand, outside of a topless Darryl Hannah, I don’t know that there was much about the original that was really selling seats to your mass audience. It may have still done well as a romcom, with a typical romcom audience. But, I suspect, Mermaid Darryl is what brought in the male audience and made the film stand out enough to ask for a remake. So, if you replace Darryl with Jillian Bell, it seems like you’ve lost the sales gimmick. She’s a perfectly good looking woman, but not in a centerfold sense.
I doubt the strategy would still work in the Internet age, but if they wanted a go for it, they’d do better with Lake Bell.
But fundamentally, I’m not seeing a lot of potential for this. It may and up a perfectly good film, but I doubt that they’re saving any money by pilfering the original plotline and, from the casting (of both Jillian and Tatum), it looks like they’re probably going to end up with something more guffaw-style comedy and probably not too romantic, so I doubt that the audience with whom the film would have name recognition are going to see much in common between what they liked about the old film and the new one. The old one was pretty mushy and the comedy was baked pretty heavily into a quasi-realistic presentation. It didn’t come across as a comedy so much as a romance with a few funny moments (unless I’m misremembering). So older viewers are probably going to be put off by the “dumbing down” of the style and the newer viewers will have never heard of the original.
But eh, there’s no reason not to go ahead and do a remake either. Like I said, the original wasn’t exactly a classic for the ages.
Yeah, but every once in a while everything works out to make a classic. Once you have a classic, you’re better off to just re-release the old movie than to try and remake it. That’s just a waste of cash. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that re-releasing a film is a thing which can be done.
What an asinine idea-To pick a hokey movie like Splash to remake, when what the world really needs something of substance…like a retelling of Mannequin!
I think Jillian Bell is hilarious and I’d watch her reading the phone book. I’ll catch this one when it comes on TV or on a plane flight.
What would be a “necessary” remake?
Not sure if it was “necessary,” but Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) was a remake and a huge improvement over the film it was based on, a dim and disappointing little comedy called Bedtime Story (1964.). And then somebody added some snappy tunes and remade DRS as a hit musical on Broadway.
Few people will go to the multiplex to see a movie that they have on DVD or could stream. (Now, TCM does show old movies in my multiplex, usually on Sundays and Thursdays. These can be anything from a B&W classic like The Maltese Falcon to a recent classic like Stripes.)
And actually, you should be grateful that they’re “only” remaking Splash. Because the other thing that they’re doing is taking an old property and turning it into a franchise. That’s the plan for Ghostbusters, for which they plan multiple movies, television shows, video games and the like.
If advertised like a big new release, I bet you could get 75% of the turnaround of a new release on the big screen, but at zero production cost and zero risk of the film being a dud. They just don’t advertise films like they’re the new big thing.
Presumably, one where the original had a lot of unrealized potential. Or one where the original, while basically a good movie, was so dated in some way that modern audiences couldn’t appreciate it.
I, generally, don’t like remakes/reboots, especially when they’re for movies I love (not Splash 
) but I saw a trailer for the Magnificent Seven remake, and I must say, it looks very good. So far.
Of course, M7 was a remake itself.
Oh, no! No, no, no! I am NOT watching a woman hang-glide around the inside of a department store again! Four times was enough!
This doesn’t have to be a remake. As they’re swapping the genders, and presumably altering many elements of the plot, they can comfortably make it a sequel.
And the only saving grace from those movies, Meshach Taylor, aka Hollywood, died a few years back.
And I’ve seen them ALL!!! 
Even a crappy sword and sandals one that I can barely remember. I WOULD like to see a Seven Samurai remake, which makes me fickle I guess.
I just read on another forum that Seven Bochco wants to remake LA Law.