Thanks, Tom Hanks! No “Harvey” remake!

Remember this:

Steven Spielberg, the world’s most successful living filmmaker, recently announced that he’s doing a remake of “Harvey,” the 1950 Jimmy Stewart comedy, with that project bumping aside, for the time being, Spielberg’s involvement as a director in a remake of “Matt Helm,” the 1970s TV series that is being developed as a feature at Paramount.

How depressing it was to think of Spielberg remaking a Jimmy Stewart movie that simply does not need to get remade. Well, hallelujah, looks like you can stick a fork in this bad idea:

Steven Spielberg has withdrawn from “Harvey.” He spent the past half year developing the pic, his first directing vehicle for the reconstituted DreamWorks.

Spielberg’s first choice was Tom Hanks, but the actor who is often regarded as a modern day Stewart wanted no part of taking over a role played by the iconic star. Spielberg and Fox spent several months courting Robert Downey Jr. While the star didn’t commit, he made suggestions on rewrites of the Jonathan Tropper script. He and Spielberg never found themselves in creative sync on the script, and the director finally called the whole thing off.

I guess we can say that the rabbit… er… died.

Seriously it’s a classic, it’s high concept, everybody would have had a fun time making the movie, they all would have made boodles of cash… hell, there may have even been a decent script in the works. But at least Tom Hanks had the clarity of mind to say something like, “Hey, people may compare me to Jimmy Stewart, but why would I actually want to play a role that would put me square in his shadow?”

Clearer heads prevail. Nothing to see here, so please hop along…

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