The $9bn movie empire Ron Howard refused to launch: “It turned out to be huge”
He’s already one of the highest-grossing directors in cinema history, but Ron Howard would be sitting comfortably inside the top ten had he not turned down the chance to direct a billion-dollar global phenomenon that launched one of the industry’s most lucrative franchises.
In his defence, those kinds of movies have never really been inside his wheelhouse. George Lucas offered him the opportunity to helm Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which was, coincidentally, also a billion-dollar global phenomenon that resurrected one of the industry’s most lucrative franchises, but he was of a similar mind to Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis; it was Lucas or bust.
He did eventually get around to taking the reins on a blockbuster set in a galaxy far, far away, but only after Lucasfilm had fired Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, with Howard facing an uphill battle to whip Solo into shape. It’s not a bad film, by any means, but it did lose a fortune and became the lowest-earning live-action Star Wars flick of all time, so there’s that.
It’s also the most expensive picture he’s ever directed, with reshoots pushing the budget towards an eye-watering $300million. Before that, the costliest production of his career happened to be the most successful, with his $125m adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code netting a cool $767m from cinemas.
Those are the only two franchises he’s been involved in, and he was a last-minute replacement on one of them, making it clear that splashy properties aren’t really his bag. That offers a handy explanation as to why, much like that man Spielberg again, he wasn’t interested in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
“I’d read the books, and they were fantastic, but, in all honesty, I had just finished The Grinch,” he told The One Show. “That was fun and fascinating, but an unbelievably challenging and difficult production, so I didn’t want to be in the fantasy world for another few years. I knew Harry Potter was good, but it turned out to be huge.”
Chris Columbus eventually got the nod and delivered what was the second-highest-grossing movie ever made at the time, which ironically knocked The Phantom Menace into third spot. By the end of its theatrical run, the three biggest hits to ever see the inside of a multiplex were James Cameron’s Titanic, and two films that Ron Howard refused to direct, which is quite the cosmic coincidence.
The eight-film Harry Potter saga and its three Fantastic Beasts spinoffs would earn almost $9.7 billion at the box office, making it the third most commercially successful franchise of all time, behind only the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars. It would have been a feather in Howard’s cap, but he doesn’t regret it, and it would have robbed him of his greatest achievement.
Instead of directing the first Harry Potter, he made A Beautiful Mind, which won him his Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, so he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.
