When I caught up with Ron Howard at his new base in 2oth Century-Fox‘s Hollywood studios where he is currently pre-producing Zanuck and Brown's Cocoon, he was direct, honest and somewhat taken aback by the Splash phenomenon that has literally changed his life.
“Candidly speaking. the movie is going over better than anybody had guessed. The critics love it and the audiences seem to love it. I care very much about Splash but even l am surprised at the amount of media exposure and attention it is getting. It seems to have captured everyone's imagination – and that's more than I had dared hope for."
But first things first. Producer Brian Grazer began developing the story for Splash four years ago, mainly, by his own admission, to see one of his richest fantasies come to life. And Ron Howard soon joined him on this quest. “Brian was my producer on Nightshift and early on in that film's life he told me he had a script and would like me to read it as a friend. l did, and after a few rewrites were done on it. l read it again and really liked it. Nightshift was such a great experience for all of us and at about the time of the wrap date. I learned that Splash had been dropped by United Artists. There was a chance all of a sudden for me to become involved and as I had liked the idea, that is precisely what I did. That was about 2 1/2 years go - so all in all I've known about the project for three years.”
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Enter the Walt Disney studios who needed to have a hit film after the string of financial disappointments they had weathered with the likes of Dragons/aver Tron and Something Wicked this way comes. Splash seemed to be the sort of film they should be making in the ‘80s. ”I always expected Disney to be nervous but they never were. I think they always knew that they wouldn't put the Disney name on the picture but they had liked Nightshift and they made a point of telling us that they wanted us to make Splash in the same way we would have made the movie
at any other studio. I thought that was just lip-service at first but in actuality we never got the dreaded Disney Memo l was always expecting."
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