The one movie Ron Howard would love to do over: “I wouldn’t mind another crack at it”
Very rarely will an actor or filmmaker get the chance to have another shot at one of their movies, something that’s been troubling Ron Howard for a long time, even if there’s a cruel sense of irony to how the possibility was ripped right out of his hands.
Alfred Hitchcock made The Man Who Knew Too Much twice, Cecil B DeMille gave The Ten Commandments a do-over, Michael Mann transformed LA Takedown into Heat, and James Stewart was so dissatisfied with his performance in 1950’s Harvey that he did it again on television two decades later.
While remakes, reboots, and reinventions continue to be all the rage in modern Hollywood, high-profile filmmakers returning to the well to give one of their own pictures a fresh coat of paint is rare. More than rare, probably, since it’s hard to remember the last time it happened on a non-independent scale.
That’s a bummer for Howard, then, who was all for the idea of doing one of his again, except better this time. It wasn’t a bad film, and it was a box office success that found long-lasting cult fandom, but since he suggested that it wasn’t made under the optimal working conditions, you can see why he’d be keen.
“I wouldn’t mind another crack at it,” he said of 1988’s Willow. “I’d deal with the villains much differently, find a way to be more dimensional and unexpected. It also gets a little harsh in some of the battle stuff. It needs to be a little more swashbuckle, and a little less gritty combat.”
Only Ron Howard would theorise that if he remade one of his own movies, he’d make it less gritty, but at least it’s on-brand. He doesn’t actively dislike Val Kilmer and Warwick Davies’ fantastical adventure, although it did send his career in a different direction when he figured out that having George Lucas lurking over his shoulder for the entire production wasn’t something he was keen to replicate.
He almost had the chance to get his wish three and a half decades later, when the long-mooted sequel emerged as a Disney+ original series, with the two-time Academy Award winner serving as a hands-on executive producer who was keenly involved in the development process, which turned out to be for naught.
Howard confirmed that if and when Willow was renewed for a second season on the streaming service, he’d gladly step into the breach and take the reins for an episode or two, giving him his wish to head back to familiar creative ground and do things differently, and hypothetically better.
Unfortunately for him, the ‘Mouse House’ scrapped the show after one season, and eventually removed it from the platform entirely, leaving him shit out of luck and with no other option but to continue thinking about what he would do with a second bite of the apple, since he’s not getting that chance.
