Rick Moranis has kept a pretty low profile in Hollywood for the last couple of decades. While never completely disappearing from television or film, it's been a long while since we've seen him in a major role in a movie, but that's all going to change when Moranis reprises his role as Wayne Szalinski in a planned reboot/sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
So what led to Rick Moranis' long gaps in between projects? The short answer is simply family. The actor's wife died of breast cancer in 1991, and he had two young children to raise. When choosing between career and family, he unsurprisingly choose his family. In an interview with THR back in 2015, when all his Ghostbusters co-stars were getting ready to cameo in the reboot, and he wasn't, the actor admitted he never really planned to take an extended break, it just sort of turned out that way...
I took a break, which turned into a longer break," he says. "But I'm interested in anything that I would find interesting. I still get the occasional query about a film or television role. And as soon as one comes along that piques my interest, I'll probably do it. [But Ghostbusters] didn't appeal to me.
Rick Moranis had also said previously that one of the reasons the Ghostbusters reboot didn't work for him was that, because the appearance was a simple cameo, it would have required a lot of work for not a lot of payoff. It's likely this exact same reason that he isn't appearing in Ghostbusters: Afterlife either.
However, the plan for Shrunk!, or whatever the new Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie is being called, appears to call for Rick Moranis to have a more significant role, at least based on the initial report from DisInsider which turned out to be accurate. That might be part of why it appealed to him enough to come on board. The majority of the work Rick Moranis has done in the last 20 years has been voice work, which has worked for him because it's something he said he could do from home.
It wasn't a formal decision. It began in an already busy year where I declined a film that was being shot out of town as the school year was beginning. But I was fortunate to be able to continue to make a living writing and doing voice work in Manhattan.
The kids Rick Moranis needed to raise have been raised, so that's no longer the reason that he's not working full time. He simply chooses what he wants to do and doesn't bother with anything that doesn't excite him. If nothing else, that's the potentially exciting thing about the new Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie. Moranis appearing at all is a strong endorsement from him that there's something about the movie that makes it worth being a part of, otherwise, he would have said no.
