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Sat 12 September 2026 17:15, UK
Residual name value goes a long way in Hollywood, which is why Ron Howard is still considered a big-name director, even though it’s been a long, long time since he helmed a hit movie.
It also helps that he co-founded, co-owns, and operates a production company, which means that even if he never wins big at the box office ever again, he’ll still be able to keep himself busy behind the camera, which looks like it might be more of a blessing than he’d have ever expected.
Thirteen Lives is the only thing he’d made in the last decade that could justifiably be called a good movie, and he’s delivered six in that time, while you’d have to go much further back to 2009’s Angels & Demons for his last bona fide theatrical success, and even at that, the Da Vinci Code sequel made $300 million less than its predecessor.
While it would be foolish to write him off, even if he’s in danger of realising the “old-man filmmaker” nightmare that haunted Quentin Tarantino to such an extent that he decided to call it quits at ten, and it wouldn’t be the first time that Howard has been questioned for his big-screen decision-making.
At the beginning of his career, when he only had a couple of comedies to his name, the ambitious filmmaker wanted to make a romantic fantasy comedy about a man and a mermaid, and he also wanted to make a sci-fi dramedy about a bunch of pensioners who get a new lease of life with alien assistance.
On paper, neither of them sounded particularly exciting, but since they “were completely under the radar,” as Howard recalled, he got to make them the way he wanted. “A mermaid film? Are you kidding? A film about old people?” he remembered being told. “You’d try to tell people the concept, and they’d roll their eyes. Both of those just barely got made.”
No studio wanted to make Splash, and it only ended up at Disney because Howard, producing partner and screenwriter Brian Grazer, and Disney were running out of options. As for Cocoon, the Andy Griffith Show alum only got the job because Robert Zemeckis was fired, and having spent a year in development already, 20th Century Fox had invested too much to let it go to waste.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
“I thought they would turn a profit,” the director reasoned. “But I really made them because the stories interested me, for different reasons, and you have to go with your instincts.” His instincts were right on the money, because both of the films that had folks rolling their eyes were huge for his career.
On combined production costs of under $30 million, Splash and Cocoon raked in a cumulative $155 million in ticket sales, the former launched Tom Hanks’ career as a big-screen leading man, and the latter won two Academy Awards, so Howard got the last laugh in the end.
