Ron Howard directed the highest grossing movie of 2000, the live-action adaptation of “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” starring Jim Carrey. He followed it up with the Best Picture Academy Award winner of 2001, “A Beautiful Mind”. I had the chance to meet Howard last year at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. He was there representing two films — his fantastic directorial doc “Jim Henson: Idea Man” and an excellent doc he produced, “Music by John Williams”, both for Disney+. Told him how much I also loved two of his best movies — 2008’s “Frost / Nixon” (starring a dynamite Frank Langella and Michael Sheen) and 2022’s powerhouse drama “Thirteen Lives”, featuring outstanding work from Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton and Viggo Mortensen.
Some of Howard’s other notable films include “Splash”, “Parenthood”, “Apollo 13”, “Cinderella Man” and three Robert Langdon adaptations, “The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels & Demons” and the underrated “Inferno”. He stepped-in to complete “Solo: A Star Wars Story” when Phil Lord and Christopher Miller exited LucasFilm’s high-profile spinoff. And his 2020 “Hillbilly Elegy” earned Glenn Close a well-deserved eighth Oscar nomination.
Music docs “Made in America”, “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” and “Pavarotti” have also had an impact over the past 15 years. On the producing side, Howard was attached to the animated “Curious George”, “Cowboys & Aliens”, “Tick… Tick… BOOM!” and recent documentaries “Julia”, “Lucy and Desi” and “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything”.
Howard’s latest directorial movie is “Eden”, a dramatic thriller with quite a cast: a trio of Oscar nominees — Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby and Ana de Armas — along with “Rush”‘s Daniel Bruhl and it-girl Sydney Sweeney. “Eden” screened last September at the Toronto International Film Festival and will finally be released in theaters through Vertical Entertainment on Aug. 22. And in a little over a month we’ll find out if Howard wins an Emmy for his guest spot (as himself) on the acclaimed AppleTV+ comedy series “The Studio”.