{"id":816259,"date":"2026-10-28T06:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816259\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T06:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:56:14","slug":"in-1993-ron-howard-was-fired-from-his-biggest-movie-yet-four-years-later-it-lost-70-million-and-won-five-razzies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816259\/","title":{"rendered":"In 1993, Ron Howard was fired from his biggest movie yet. Four years later, it lost $70 million and won five Razzies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ron<\/p>\n

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

October 27th, 2026 \u00b7 8:45pm GMT <\/p>\n

Even though he\u2019s one of the highest-grossing directors of all time, it took Ron Howard<\/a> a while to get into the blockbuster business, and even then, eye-watering budgets were the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n

Unless something dramatic changes, which feels unlikely because he can\u2019t seem to buy himself a hit these days, Solo: A Star Wars Story will take some beating as the most expensive movie of Howard\u2019s career, with the firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller causing the budget to balloon to an estimated $300 million.<\/p>\n

The two-time Academy Award winner didn\u2019t helm his first nine-figure flick until How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which was his 14th feature, and since then, only the first two instalments in the Da Vinci Code trilogy, In the Heart of the Sea, and his Star Wars spinoff have followed suit, and half of them flopped<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that he can\u2019t be trusted with those kinds of numbers; it\u2019s that they don\u2019t seem particularly well-suited to his skill set. What that skill set is, exactly, nobody can be sure, seeing as there\u2019s no such thing as a Ron Howard-style film because Ron Howard has no identifiable style, which are his words<\/a>, not ours.<\/p>\n

By 1993, he\u2019d made his bones as a safe pair of hands who could helm a picture in any genre and deliver a serviceable end result and a decent profit at the box office, but he\u2019d never made anything that exceeded a $60 million budget. He was planning on it, though, but he was ultimately kicked to the kerb.<\/p>\n

In December, Variety<\/a> noted that the Happy Days alum was attached to adapt David Brin\u2019s novel, The Postman, for the big screen, with Eric Roth tasked to write the screenplay, Wendy Finerman on producing duties, and Tom Hanks set for the lead role as the titular drifter who wanders a post-apocalyptic America.<\/p>\n

When it comes to dodging bullets, they don\u2019t come much deadlier than that. By 1995, Kevin Costner had his fancy tickled by the high-concept story, and when he came aboard to star, he dispensed with Howard, Finerman, and Roth, set Brian Helgeland to rewrite the script, installed himself as a producer alongside Jim Wilson and Steve Tisch, and decided to pull double duty by directing and starring.<\/p>\n

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

What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything, as it turned out. Whereas Costner\u2019s first tilt behind the camera won seven Academy Awards, including two for him, and became the top-earning title in the history of an entire genre, The Postman was a catastrophic bomb that completely annihilated his mainstream career<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was universally panned, lost upwards of $70 million, and won all five of the Razzies it was nominated for, including \u2018Worst Picture\u2019, \u2018Worst Director\u2019, and \u2018Worst Actor\u2019. Would that have happened had Howard and Hanks been the ones to make it? Nobody will ever know, but they\u2019ll be more glad than most that they never had to find out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still October 27th, 2026 \u00b7 8:45pm GMT Even though he\u2019s one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[32677,198514,6491,218508,96,22725,35692,222878,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-816259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-1990s","tag-198514","tag-celebrities","tag-drama-movie","tag-entertainment","tag-kevin-costner","tag-ron-howard","tag-sci-fi-movie","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816259","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=816259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}