Earlier this summer, the remake machine spat out the prospect of a new iteration of Splash—but with a twist. Original Splash producer Brian Grazer proudly proclaimed it was time to revisit the classic buoy-meets-gull romantic comedy that saw Daryl Hannah take Tom Hanks to Atlantis or his watery grave (the ending’s ambiguous). The Imagine Entertainment founder seemed awfully geeked about the remake and the star he’d already snared for it, though he couldn’t reveal the premise of the retelling or the identity of said star.
This latest bit of remake news didn’t faze the A.V. Club, of course, because by now we’ve accepted that every story ever told will be retold until Skynet takes out our electrical grid. We even mused that the reworked movie could feature a gender-swapped couple—and although we’re not suggesting that anyone involved with the movie combs through the Newswire or anything, Deadline’s reporting that the reversal is in fact happening.
Channing Tatum and Jillian Bell have just been announced as the interspecies lovers, but Tatum will be playing/wearing the scales with Bell standing in for Hanks. The match-up was reportedly pitched by Bell herself, who previously worked with Tatum on 22 Jump Street. Marja-Lewis Ryan (Liked, The Four-Faced Liar) is writing the script for Disney, which is just hooked on the live-action mermaid movies these days. No director or release date has been announced yet, so for now, we’ll just imagine Tatum with an underwater coterie of his Magic Mike pals.