Ron Howard is “dying” to rip off ‘Big Fish’: “I’m actively searching”
If there’s one thing Ron Howard can’t be called, it’s a ripoff merchant. Of the few directors to have overseen a multi-billion dollar filmography, he’s one of the outliers who hasn’t been overwhelmingly consumed by IP, franchise fare, remakes, reboots, or sequels.
Yes, he helmed three Da Vinci Code movies with Tom Hanks in the lead role, and he helmed Solo: A Star Wars Story, the tenth instalment in the sci-fi saga, but he’s always favoured literary adaptations, real-life stories, and original screenplays over repeatedly returning to the well of world-renowned brands.
In fact, of the only 12 filmmakers who’ve earned more money at the box office throughout their careers, he’s directed fewer sequels than any of them apart from Robert Zemeckis, Ridley Scott, and Jon Favreau, which speaks volumes about his longevity, versatility, and general aversion to doing what’s been done before.
However, there’s one film that Howard admitted he’d love to rip off, naming it specifically as the exact type of picture he’s on the hunt fo find. “I’m dying to find a contemporary sci-fi fantasy, like Cocoon or Her or The Shape of Water,” he informed Vulture, before laying his cards on the table and flat-out confessing that there’s a certain whimsical flick he’s dreaming of emulating as closely as possible.
“I haven’t found it, but I’m actively searching for something like Big Fish,” he declared. “That tone, that style. I love doing movies based on real events, but that pushes the aesthetic of the film into a more naturalistic vein. And if I could find a good fantasy where I connected with the themes and the character, it would open the door to something a little more visually poetic.”
Fantasy is not a genre he’s unfamiliar with, but it has been a while. Having sworn off comedy after The Dilemma debacle, it would appear that Howard is sniffing around the studios for a return to a medium he hasn’t dabbled in for a long time, with 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas his last dalliance with the overtly fantastical.
He’s made 14 pictures since then, but the template they’ve followed is hardly inspiring: biopic, literary adaptation, biopic, literary adaptation, stage adaptation, sequel to a literary adaptation, comedy, biopic, literary adaptation, threequel to a literary adaptation, last-minute Star Wars spinoff, biopic, biopic, and a survival thriller inspired by actual events.
Is Howard even capable of making something like Big Fish? It’s an interesting question, and not only because the movie is so intrinsically linked to Burton’s style, thematic sensibilities, and filmic worldview. Does he have the right amount of ambition, inspiration, and whimsy to pull something like that off? It would certainly be a change of pace, but it might also be the reason he hasn’t found it yet.
The two-time Academy Award winner can do drama in his sleep, but he’s never combined it with the fantastical to a significant degree since Cocoon, and that was 40 years ago. Then again, perhaps that desperation to dust off those long-latent skills has inspired his search for a Big Fish-esque project that he can sink his teeth into; he just needs to find it first.
