The one and only movie Ron Howard was adamant he’d never make: “I won’t be directing”
Looking at his filmography, it’s not unreasonable to think that there isn’t a genre in cinema or a particular style or tone of movie that Ron Howard isn’t willing to try at least once, but there was a sole exception.
Of course, the two-time Academy Award winner has never helmed a horror film yet, and claiming that the closest he got was a Tom Hanks dream sequence in Inferno is pushing it more than a little bit, but he did once sign on to take the reins on a Lovecraftian comic book adaptation, which would have ticked two boxes.
Howard has admitted that he’s been offered superhero flicks in the past, and if he’d followed through on his pledge to bring The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft to the screen, then he’d have killed two birds with one stone and removed the two biggest mediums that he hasn’t gotten around to yet.
Name a genre, and the chances are high that he’s done it at least once. Drama, biopics, romance, period pieces, thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy, westerns, comedies, and literary adaptations are all present and accounted for, with the former child star spending the last five decades weaving his way through almost every form of storytelling and spectacle that Hollywood has to offer.
However, The Dilemma, being a big, fat piece of shit, has turned him against a return to more rib-tickling fare, but that wasn’t his only reason for making it known that, under no circumstances, would he ever be stepping behind the camera to steer the long-gestating and still never made Arrested Development movie to either a streamer or a multiplex.
As well as narrating the entire series throughout its five-season and 84-episode run, Howard also played himself in eight instalments of the cult favourite comedy, and he only ended up with the job in the first place because creator Mitch Hurwitz essentially told him that he’d be doing it if and when the show was ordered to series, leaving the retired actor and full-time filmmaker with little choice in the matter.
Between Arrested Development‘s initial cancellation in 2006 and its revival on Netflix seven years later, virtually all of the key creatives repeatedly signalled their desire to mount a feature-length version of the Bluth family’s misadventures, and even when the show ended again in 2019, there was still plenty of support to give the cast of characters a cinema-esque swansong.
Had it happened, we’d have known who wasn’t wielding the megaphone. “I won’t be directing the Arrested Development movie,” Howard said. “But Mitch Hurwitz is determined. I know we’ve been saying this for a while.” In the end, he didn’t have anything to worry about, with the picture never materialising.
Jason Bateman revealed that the movie was “kind of close” to entering production, but when pressed for an update in 2025, he was nothing if not forthcoming. “I don’t think anybody gives a shit,” he suggested. “I think it’s done.”
On the plus side, that’s a win for Howard, who knows that he won’t be getting offered the job, even if he’d turn it down anyway.
