The only Ron Howard movie that became a cult classic: “That seems to be what’s happened”
Cult classic movies can’t be made on purpose or manufactured; it’s a reputation that needs to be earned. Countless directors have built their entire careers upon them, but it would be fair to say that Ron Howard is hardly a filmmaker anyone would instantly associate with the term.
When contemplating cinema’s ultimate cult directors, certain names come up more than others. John Carpenter, Terry Gilliam, John Waters, Dario Argento, Russ Meyer, and even Ed Wood are among those who’ll always come up in conversation, as is Howard’s first feature-length mentor, Roger Corman.
Corman was the king of the B-movie, launched countless careers, and knew his way around a cult classic better than almost anyone else in Hollywood history, so it’s a touch ironic that the flick Howard used to cut his teeth under the prolific producer didn’t quite manage to attain that status.
1977’s Grand Theft Auto, Howard’s directorial debut, very much looks and feels like a Corman picture. However, it didn’t enter the cult hall of fame that so many of his other pictures did. Still, it was the launching pad the former Happy Days star needed, and he entered the studio system immediately when Warner Bros distributed his sophomore effort, Night Shift.
Since then, Howard has weaved his way through almost every genre the industry offers, typically backed by one of Tinseltown’s heavy hitters. Howard doesn’t make independent films; he doesn’t do daring projects, and he doesn’t tackle any subjects designed to push buttons and break boundaries, making it perfectly fitting that his only self-proclaimed cult classic cost an absolute fortune to make.
Common wisdom dictates that any blockbuster with an estimated budget of almost $300 million doesn’t stand a chance of earning the cult tag, but Howard would disagree. Solo: A Star Wars Story was beset by behind-the-scenes issues, landed with a dull thud at the box office, and suffered the ignominy of leaving theatres as the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie ever made.
However, after it was too late to prevent Disney and Lucasfilm from losing a fortune on the Han Solo origin story – which also killed the studio’s plans to continue developing anthologised spinoffs – it suddenly became massively popular among the Star Wars fandom, leaving Howard to quizzically reflect on its unusual post-cinema life.
“I don’t know how you have a cult movie when you make a Star Wars film, but that seems to be what’s kind of happened with the movie Solo,” he pondered to Virgin Radio. He’s got a point, but the fact social media campaigns were launched to try and will a sequel into existence underlines that despite nobody giving much of a shit about Solo the first time around, it cultivated a groundswell of support when it was way too late.
