{"id":599261,"date":"2026-05-23T05:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T05:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/599261\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T05:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T05:02:14","slug":"the-r-rated-2013-movie-that-made-ron-howard-uncomfortable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/599261\/","title":{"rendered":"The R-rated 2013 movie that made Ron Howard uncomfortable"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Fri 22 May 2026 17:45, UK <\/p>\n

While he looks like an ageing, ginger-haired cherub and gives off the air of a man who\u2019d apologise if you punched him in the side of the head, Ron Howard<\/a> isn\u2019t unfamiliar with wading into R-rated waters.<\/p>\n

He almost dipped his toes into an X-rated ocean<\/a>, too, with the two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker confessing that in order to help fund his dreams of switching a life in front of the camera for one behind it, he seriously contemplated trading on his residual TV fame to star in a porno.<\/p>\n

In a moment that humanity will forever be thankful for, Howard decided against whipping his kit off and going at it on camera, but as a director, R ratings have been few and far between. Night Shift got one, as you\u2019d expect when it\u2019s full of gratuitous toplessness<\/a>, but that would be his first and last for years.<\/p>\n

It would definitely be PG-13 if it were released today, but Backdraft was an R-rated flick, too, with The Missing and his most recent venture, Eden, among the few other entries in Howard\u2019s back catalogue that were withheld from younger audiences. He\u2019s not against pushing those boundaries when he has to, but for the most part, he\u2019d rather not.<\/p>\n

However, Howard didn\u2019t have a choice when he made what he called the sexiest film of his entire career<\/a>, which was obviously the one about racing car drivers. Not sexy in the conventional sense, but it was sexy to him, dammit, and that\u2019s all that really mattered, even if he wasn\u2019t too comfortable with it.<\/p>\n

A period piece set in and around Europe, with an Australian and a German in the leading roles, meant that Rush didn\u2019t look like a nailed-on success in the United States from the outside looking in. Howard thought that might be the case, and he was right, since less than a third of its earning came from the American box office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis movie isn\u2019t tailored for the American audience, particularly,\u201d he acknowledged. \u201cAnd it\u2019ll be a marketing challenge. All of our test screenings have been great! It\u2019s one of the things that has been surprising for the movie. It\u2019s been satisfying as a director, but it\u2019s worrisome for a producer, will they give it a chance? It\u2019s hard to know in the US whether people will take the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n

Retrospectively, you can say that not many people in his homeland took the risk, and the R-rating didn\u2019t help. When asked if he could have made it PG-13, Howard seemed caught in two minds. \u201cThere was just no way,\u201d he offered, although it didn\u2019t sound like he was overly enthused about the R: \u201cI wasn\u2019t ideal with it, honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rush is one of his most underrated and overlooked pictures<\/a>, largely because it was shunned by the American audience, who he thought might shun it. If it hadn\u2019t been R-rated, would it have fared any better? Maybe, but as uncomfortable as it made him, it was a compromise he was unwilling to make.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still Fri 22 May 2026 17:45, UK While he looks like an ageing,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,35692,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-599261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-ron-howard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}