It’s probably fair to say that no two actors are paired up in people’s heads as automatically as Zendaya and Tom Holland are right now. The couple have played opposite each other in multiple films. They’re engaged off-screen too, so if they end up in another love story together, we probably won’t need much convincing.
Usually, fan-casting ideas come from, well… fans. In one recent case, however, we got a fan-casting suggestion for a remake that came from someone involved in the original project: Susan Egan, the actor who voiced Megara in Disney’s 1997 animated Hercules. Egan, who gave the movie much of its edge, was inducted as a Disney Legend in Anaheim as part of a class that included Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. She recently performed in D23’s Disney Princess concert and was still clearly processing the honor. “I’m looking at the lineup of all of the other people being honored, and I feel, I don’t know, just it’s a bit crazy,” she said. “It’s a little surreal” (via ABC).
In the middle of all that, Deadline asked her the question that tends to follow Meg around these days. Disney’s live-action Hercules remake has been in the works since 2020, so who should step into the main roles now? Egan’s picks were Zendaya as Meg and Tom Holland as Hercules.
Meg falls outside the usual Disney-princess mold. She’s dryly funny, and spends most of the movie pushing back against a romance she’s plainly already caught up in. Zendaya’s MJ runs on some of the same guarded wit Egan brought to Meg nearly 30 years ago, which may well be what Egan is responding to.
Holland as Hercules is the less surprising half of the pairing, if only because fans have been making that case for years. Hercules is, in essence, an earnest kid with too much power and nowhere he quite fits, which is a lane Holland has more or less occupied since 2016. He can sing too, and a Hercules remake probably isn’t something Disney can half-cast if “Go the Distance” is still part of the program. Egan’s pitch, ultimately, sounds a little more plausible once we remember that Hercules and Meg’s dynamic is one the audiences already know the Hollywood couple can play. The arc — a sincere boy gradually earning the trust of a guarded girl — is familiar territory for them.
The project has the Russo brothers producing and once had Guy Ritchie attached to direct, but reporting over the past few years has suggested a film caught between competing visions, with the Russos reportedly pushing bolder swings and Disney appearing to lean safer after talk of a TikTok-era musical drew a less-than-enthusiastic response from fans. Casting rumors have come and gone in the meantime —Taron Egerton and Ariana Grande among them — without much seeming to solidify.
Zendaya and Holland are also two of the busiest actors working, so the chances of them both ending up in this particular movie may be a little low. As for where the remake actually stands, that remains somewhat unclear. One of the more persistent recent rumors has suggested the project could be reworked around Hades, the villainous ruler of the Underworld — possibly even under a different title.
