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MARTIN GROVE’S FILM FLASHBACK: “GROUNDHOG DAY” OPENS 2/12/1993

Tom Hanks was the first choice to play GROUNDHOG DAY’s cynical weatherman, but he passed because he felt audiences always saw him as a nice guy and would expect a nicer ending to the movie.

Director Harold Ramis also considered casting Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Travolta & Robin Williams, who all seemed too nice. Michael Keaton wasn’t overly nice, but passed because he was confused by the story where TV weatherman Phil Connors wakes up every morning trapped in a time loop and must relive that same day — which is Groundhog Day.

The problem was solved when Ramis cast Bill Murray, with whom he’d worked as an actor on 1984’s GHOSTBUSTERS. Murray was no Mr. Nice Guy on or off screen, making him the perfect Phil. GROUNDHOG, which opened Feb. 12, 1993 via Columbia, was directed by Ramis from a screenplay by Ramis and Danny Rubin (FREAKY FRIDAY). Andie MacDowell & Chris Elliott starred opposite Murray, who got two bad bites from the groundhog during filming and needed anti-rabies injections!

The project went through many story changes and screenplay drafts after Rubin began working on it in the early ’90s. Originally, Ramis was going to have Phil relive Feb. 2 for 10,000 years. Rubin’s credited Anne Rice’s 1985 novel “The Vampire Lestat” with getting him thinking about immortality.

Rubin wanted the movie to begin with Phil already locked in his time loop, but that raised questions about how he could know what was going to happen that day. Ramis reportedly told Rubin he wouldn’t change the opening — but he did anyway, along with other story points.

Rubin wrote GROUNDHOG as a script to show producers who might hire him for other projects. It was a much darker story originally, but when Ramis got involved he brightened the tone by boosting the comedy. Murray and Ramis had quite different takes on the story — with Murray liking Rubin’s philosophical ideas while Ramis just wanted to make a comedy.

Ramis prevailed and delivered a boxoffice hit that did $71.1M worldwide on a budget of $14.6M, which was nicely profitable at the time.

Reflecting later on the business of screenwriting, Rubin observed, “I quickly learned you have to compromise in order for your work to be produced. The fact that Harold Ramis had interest and took the time to edit and polish the script so it got made, plus (his) help with finding funding, as well as directing the movie, I’m very grateful for all of that.

“At the same time, when I watch the movie, I see more comedy than what I intended — more of a romantic story than was ever in my script, many of the darker elements toned down…The movie just didn’t turn out fully how I envisioned.”

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