Slowly but surely, gender-swapped remakes are starting to become the norm in Hollywood. We already saw an all-female Ghostbusters earlier this summer, and a female-driven Ocean's Eleven will hit theaters in 2018. Now it seems that another classic franchise will get the gender-bending treatment. Not only is Channing Tatum taking on the role of the mermaid (merman?) in the upcoming Splash remake, but Tom Hanks also has an idea for how he could return to really make it a truly progressive love story. He explained:
Look, I think if they were really going to be bold, I would come back as Allen Bauer, and I would go off with Channing Tatum. That would be a bold movie. And I am suggesting it right now.
According to a new report from People, while attending the Inferno premiere in Los Angeles earlier this week, Tom Hanks addressed the upcoming Splash remake and suggested a way to get himself involved in the project. By his own estimation, a genuinely bold move for the franchise would be for Hanks to come back as Allen Bauer so a romance can blossom between him and Channing Tatum's gender-swapped version of Daryl Hannah's mermaid. This would obviously represent an enormous change from the original film -- which focused on a heterosexual romance between a man and a female mermaid -- but Tom Hanks seems to think that it's the type of move that would really sell a modern version of Splash.
You know what? We're on board with this idea. It's 2016, dammit. The man/merman love story is an underused storytelling device these days.
It's definitely not outside the realm of possibility for Tom Hanks to return in the upcoming Splash remake, even if it's just a cameo. With Ron Howard returning to work on the long-awaited sequel, it seems incredibly likely that he would seek to capitalize on his longstanding work relationship with Hanks. Even if Allen Bauer doesn't return to fall in love with the brand-new male mermaid, it would seem like a wasted opportunity to not include Hanks in the film in some capacity.
At this point, the possibility of Tom Hanks returning to the Splash universe to fall in love with Channing Tatum feels fairly unlikely, but it's definitely an idea that we can get behind as fans of the original that want to see something new. We will bring you any and all relevant details related to the development of the upcoming Splash update as more information becomes available to us. The remake does not have an official release date yet.
