{"id":412129,"date":"2026-04-22T17:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T17:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/412129\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T17:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T17:58:13","slug":"the-mermaid-battle-that-nearly-killed-splash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/412129\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mermaid Battle That Nearly Killed \u2018Splash\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt was 1983, and a 26-year-old producer named Brian Grazer<\/a> was sitting across from the most feared man in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tRay Stark had a rival mermaid movie loaded with Warren Beatty, Jessica Lange, Herbert Ross directing and Robert Towne writing the script. Grazer had a scrappy fairy tale at Disney \u2014 a studio whose most recent live-action release was Gus, a flop about a field goal-kicking mule \u2014 and a leading man whose cross-dressing sitcom had just been canceled.<\/p>\n

\n\tStark\u2019s message was simple.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe threatened to just crush me,\u201d Grazer says. \u201cThat I \u2018Have nothing. Nothing.\u2019 They\u2019d \u2018kill\u2019 me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came the offer: 5 percent of the first-dollar gross if Disney would kill Splash<\/a>. Disney said no, however, and Splash opened March 9, 1984. It became a top-10 hit, made Tom Hanks<\/a> a movie star overnight, invented the Touchstone label, cracked March open as a release window, birthed Imagine Entertainment and gave the English language a new girl\u2019s name: Madison.<\/p>\n

\n\tSitting down with It Happened in Hollywood<\/a>, Grazer and Ron Howard<\/a> lay out how one of the great sleeper hits of the decade almost never existed \u2014 and how close it came, repeatedly, to disappearing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe origin is pure Grazer: At 25, producing a TV movie on Zuma Beach, he spotted \u201cthe hottest girl at USC, literally,\u201d who had never given him the time of day. Then someone whispered: That\u2019s the producer. \u201cSeconds later, she\u2019s asking me out,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

\n\tA parade of newly interested women followed. Grazer found it clarifying, if vexing. Were they into him for him \u2014\u00a0or for what he could do for them? He went home and wrote down, literally, the attributes of someone who might actually love him back.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat became the mermaid,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe script bounced through United Artists, Warner Bros. and nearly every studio in town. Nobody wanted to touch it. Not with Beatty circling and the powerful Stark looming. Executives didn\u2019t say no \u2014they just vanished.<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually, the project landed at Disney \u2014 a move that, at the time, felt like a step down. This was pre-Renaissance Disney. Howard for one wasn\u2019t convinced.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat is really the minor leagues,\u201d he recalls thinking.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Disney was eager, on one condition: the mermaid needed a bikini top.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was a no-go,\u201d Howard says. What followed was a surreal pitch to Disney\u2019s seven-person board, where Grazer found himself explaining mermaid logic to chairman Card Walker. The compromise \u2014 long hair, body stocking, no visible nudity \u2014 got them over the line.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen Stark called. When the bribe didn\u2019t land, the pressure shifted to Disney chairman Ron Miller, Walt Disney\u2019s son-in-law and, as Grazer puts it, \u201ca tough guy.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHis response, per Grazer: \u201cWe\u2019re doing it anyway. Fuck you. \u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tNow they had a greenlight \u2014\u00a0and a race. Howard, coming off Night Shift, promised he\u2019d beat Ross to theaters. \u201cI\u2019m 26 years old. He\u2019s not going to beat me,\u201d he remembers telling them.<\/p>\n

\n\tGrazer remembers it more vividly: \u201cYou said you\u2019d be like a military grunt climbing under barbed wire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHoward shrugs. \u201cYeah, I probably did.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Ross\u2019s movie never materialized. Splash did.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe casting followed the same pattern: almost everyone said no. John Travolta passed. Richard Dreyfuss passed. Others declined without meetings. One agent reportedly sneered that his client would \u201cnever act in a movie with Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTom Hanks, at that point, wasn\u2019t Tom Hanks. He auditioned for the brother role \u2014 the John Candy part \u2014 after a tip from writer Lowell Ganz. \u201cHe was crackling with intelligence,\u201d Howard says. After the audition, Howard and Grazer looked at each other. \u201cCould he be the lead?\u201d they both wondered. Grazer went in and sold it.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for the mermaid, Daryl Hannah had already made an impression in Blade Runner. Then she walked in and said she\u2019d spent her childhood practicing underwater breathing with a garden hose. \u201cI\u2019ve dreamed of being a mermaid all my life,\u201d she told them, landing her the part.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe also got sealed into a custom tail that took hours to remove, swam without a mask and outperformed professional \u201cmermaids\u201d in test tanks. Bathroom breaks were not an option.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe shoot itself was controlled chaos. The East River jump required stunt performers to be inoculated against typhus. (\u201cThen, you could get typhus,\u201d Howard notes.) At the Statue of Liberty, they had to wrap before the first ferry arrived. Howard had a 102-degree fever. They pulled off 63 setups before 7:45 a.m.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSplash: Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah in the 1984 feature.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then there\u2019s the lobster scene<\/a>. Hannah, a strict vegetarian, was handed a fake lobster stuffed with string cheese and potatoes. It didn\u2019t work. Howard demonstrated by biting into a real claw. Hannah tried once, screamed and dropped it. Then she did it again; that\u2019s the take in the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time exhibitors saw Splash, the reaction flipped instantly. (\u201cThey all wanted it,\u201d Grazer says.) The film opened in March \u2014 a dead zone at the time \u2014 and became a top-10 hit. Disney created Touchstone to release it. March became viable. High-concept comedy got a new blueprint. And \u201cMadison,\u201d pulled from a Manhattan street sign, became one of the most popular baby names in America.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe closest Grazer came to quitting wasn\u2019t Stark. It was the slow accumulation of rejection. \u201cI was so embarrassed,\u201d he says, recalling how people would actively avoid him at social events, worried he\u2019d try to sell them on his \u201cmermaid movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat kept him going, improbably, was Steven Spielberg \u2014 who had E.T. put into turnaround, as star Henry Thomas detailed in another recent episode of It Happened in Hollywood<\/a>, whose current season is taking a closer look at the magical films of 1980s.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought, this guy made Jaws and Raiders. I can\u2019t take this personally,\u201d Grazer says. <\/p>\n

\n\tHoward\u2019s memory of the shoot is almost the opposite of the fight to get there.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was one of the least stressful movies I\u2019ve ever made,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce we were rolling, it was working.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe full episode of\u00a0It Happened in Hollywood\u00a0with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard is available now on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> and wherever you get your podcasts. Splash is streaming on Disney+<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was 1983, and a 26-year-old producer named Brian Grazer was sitting across from the most feared man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[77523,93,61,60,168186,270,59102,143347,1054],"class_list":{"0":"post-412129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-brian-grazer","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-it-happened-in-hollywood","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-ron-howard","15":"tag-thrs-original-podcasts","16":"tag-tom-hanks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}