Why Ron Howard is directing Tom Hanks for the third time in Robert Langdon series
Howard is known for his diverse range of films and reluctance to direct franchises or sequels, so even he is surprised to have helmed his third Dan Brown movie
Ron Howard – a franchise director? “I would never have guessed it,” the 62 year-old grins. The veteran filmmaker has never been one for sequels. Coming from Hollywood’s old school, his best films, like Apollo 13, Backdraft and the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, are one-offs. Even though his hit comedies Splash! and Cocoon spawned inferior follow-ups, he’s declined to direct them.
It’s why even he’s surprised that he’s now made three Robert Langdon films. Adapted from the Dan Brown series of books, after 2006’s The Da Vinci Code and 2009’s Angels & Demons , he’s back with Inferno, with Tom Hanks once again reprising the role of Langdon, the Harvard symbologist. “I’ve always taken them, along with Tom Hanks, one at a time,” he says.
While that may be true, Howard’s first two Langdon films are the biggest hits of his career: The Da Vinci Code took US$758 million worldwide; Angels & Demons collected US$485 million. It was always inevitable a third would eventually get made – despite this series garnering Howard some less-than-favourable reviews.
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If this shows that critics and audiences don’t always think alike, Howard argues that Inferno is “very different tonally” to its predecessors. “It’s not like a third episode in a television season,” he says. “They’re always mysteries, there’s always the clue-path and it’s always Robert Langdon, but other than that, tonally the stories have been a little different and the worlds that you travel in are too.”