Why Did Disney Edit Daryl Hannah's Butt Crack Out of 'Splash'?
Disney felt the need to edit a wholesome scene in Splash. Why?
Splash is a romantic and chaste movie about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid. Tom Hanks plays our lead and Daryl Hannah plays his love interest. The movie is the definition of "charming."
Hanks and Hannah fall in love and have to struggle to be together, getting over the difference between man and mermaid to share an everlasting love.
The film was nominated for Best Screenplay at the 57th Academy Awards. It was written by Bruce Jay Friedman, Lowell Ganz, Brian Grazer, and Babaloo Mandel and directed by Ron Howard. It was one of Touchstone's first movies and rated PG when it came out.
Touchstone was an offshoot of Disney that focused on movies for older teens and adults. The movie was a massive hit earning nearly $70 million on an $11 million production budget.
The movie has recently found a following on Disney+ but not for the right reasons. In one scene, Daryl Hannah's character runs back into the ocean and her posterior is briefly visible beneath her long hair after Tom Hanks asks her for her number.
You can check out the uncut scene below.
As you can see...or not even really see...that glimpse of a crack was too much for Disney, so it appears they covered her butt with CGI hair. Which is definitely more unsettling to anyone actually watching.
This was pointed out by Twitter user @AllisonPregler and has quickly been retweeted and given the hashtag #Splash, which is now trending on social media.
Disney has a family-friendly brand to uphold, but it's certainly hard to chastise the original scene for being even remotely risqué. The movie is full of almost nudity, which kind of becomes a tenement of the comedy for the first act.
This unnecessary censorship doesn't change the story but it definitely feels obtrusive and weird.
I wonder who is behind the scenes making calls like this?
Did anyone actually call Disney+ to protest a little crack?
Or is it corporate policy to have no butts?
A remake of Splash is being worked on right now with Channing Tatum supposed to star as the mermaid and Jillian Bell as the human he falls for. While we don't have a release date for that yet, I guess we can assume there won't be any butts in it.
Or if there are...Tatum will have a very furry one.
