Ron Howard - FishbowlLA

Shout! Factory Extends Roger Corman, Judd Apatow Shelf Life

Richard Horgan — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:45:44 +0000

Any Hollywood company that can claim a 25-30% annual profit jump for the past five years and gross annual revenue growth of five to 10% deserves a media shout-out. This morning, Shout! Factory gets just that from TheWrap senior writer Brent Lang.

Two key assets in Shout! Factory’s retro-DVD arsenal are Judd Apatow‘s short-lived Freaks and Geeks series and the films of B movie maestro Roger Corman. For the former, company execs nimbly worked around some music licensing issues while, for the latter, they beefed things up with old-school DVD Extras featuring interviews with the likes of Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard:

“The DVD market was slipping when we made the deal, but, on the other hand, the slippage of DVD sales isn’t a cliff, it’s sort of a slope,” Corman said. “The hill is sloping downward, but it’s not dead. There’s still money to be made and Shout! has done just that.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Screenwriter Recalls the Day He Joked About CAA

Richard Horgan — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:50:00 +0000

When Michael Ovitz departed CAA in the mid-1990s, screenwriter-novelist Doug Richardson found himself unexpectedly caught up in a blaze of media coverage.

In a blog post titled “Spiking the Football,” he recalls that because he happened to leave the agency for William Morris right before Ovitz’s exit, he was lumped together somewhat hilariously with David E. Kelley in LA Times and New York Times coverage. Separately, when Richardson’s new agents packaged his first nove Dark Horse for mid-six figures, he did an interview with Variety’s Mike Fleming. Which got him into a lot of trouble:

“So,” said Fleming. “John Travolta as star. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard as producers. How’s that feel?”

“Great,” I answered, then added something I thought was funny. “Who knew I’d have to leave CAA to get packaged.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ron Howard Crowd-Sourced Production Now Online

Richard Horgan — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:45:44 +0000

The culmination of a very cool Canon-sponsored contest has been posted after separate red carpet premieres last month in New York and Los Angeles.

The 24-minute drama When You Find Me, produced by Ron Howard and directed by his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, takes its narrative cue from eight different winning category photographs. The first one shown, which cues the opening moments of the short, is of a snow-covered tree in a wide open field.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Finally, The Return of Arrested Development

Pandora Young — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 08:41:46 +0000

After five years of waiting and wondering, Arrested Development fans can exhale. The Bluths of Orange County, the greatest dysfunctional family ever to grace the small screen, are coming back!

The news was announced Sunday at the New Yorker Festival by the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz. And the best news of all, we get both a 4th season AND a movie. Hurwitz guesstimates the new season will air in the Fall of 2012, while lead actor Jason Bateman says it’ll be Spring of 2013.

Obviously, things haven’t been completely ironed out. But Hurwitz and Ron Howard, the producer, director, and narrator of the series, are working on it. Hurtwitz explained some of the impediments:

We don’t completely own the property, there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing. Just creatively, I have been working on the screenplay for a long time and found that as time went by, there was so much more to the story. In fact, where everyone’s been for five years became a big part of the story. So in working on the screenplay, I found even if I just gave five minutes per character to that back story, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together.

The plan is that the new TV episodes will cover the years that have gone by since the show last aired, and will lead up to the film. More details at the New York Times.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

African-American Reviewer Dismisses The Help

Richard Horgan — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:00:43 +0000

FishbowlLA is of the mind that certain movies on RottenTomatoes.com demand more than the ability to parse by “Rotten” and “Fresh” reviews. In the case of romantic comedies, it would be useful to be able to quickly quantify male vs. female reviewer ratings. And with regards to The Help, for better or worse, it is going to be extremely enlightening to isolate African-American critiques of the Disney adaptation.

The first such review comes from the Boston Globe‘s Wesley Morris (pictured); at press time, it is easily the most resoundingly negative RT take on a film others are tagging as a 2011 Oscar nominations certainty. Morris starts off with a telling personal anecdote and ends with some bold statements:

The Help joins everything from To Kill a Mockingbird to The Blind Side as another Hollywood movie that sees racial progress as the province of white do-gooderism…

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ron Howard Wants to Develop Your Photos

Richard Horgan — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:00:15 +0000

Over the weekend, Canon U.S.A. launched an interesting new contest, “Long Live Imagination,” in partnership with Hollywood director Ron Howard.

Photographers of all stripes are being asked to submit digital snapshots that fall into one or more of eight different movie theme categories. Howard will help pick the best and turn them into a user-generated short film, Project Imagin8ion, to be shot on the latest Canon DSLR products. From today’s press release:

“I was moved by the opportunity to collaborate with the masses, tapping into consumers’ creativity and using their photos as building blocks to produce a film,” said Howard. “I hope the project stimulates people’s imaginations whether they are an amateur photographer, a world traveler or a proud parent, and I hope what we create is meaningful.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Jon Favreau Works Cowboys & Advance Buzz Magic

Richard Horgan — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 12:30:10 +0000

Ever wonder who all those people are flying out of Van Nuys Airport on private aircraft? Per Geoff Boucher‘s rip-roaring LA Times article, one recent such take-off was winging Jon Favreau and his Cowboys & Aliens producer Ron Howard down to Austin, Texas for a critical rough footage preview of the Universal Pictures summer release at an Alamo Drafthouse event organized by Harry Knowles.

The beauty of the piece is the way it contrasts Favreau’s deft management of the new rules of “early fan engagement” with Howard’s clear admission that dealing with Twitter, Facebook and blog buzz is still a relatively new and scary process. Explains Howard:

“There’s a conversation now with fans and it starts a long time before the movie is even finished. The frightening thing for me is if somehow the wrong story gets out there and your film is misunderstood in some way… you need to shape the message, really. But Jon is the expert at this stuff.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

‘Happy Days’ Dad Tom Bosley Dead at 83

Matthew Fleischer — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:50:47 +0000

“Happy Days” actor Tom Bosley died today of heart failure at the age of 83. He had been battling lung cancer. Bosley played uber-dad Mr. Cunningham on the show.

TMZ, who broke the news of Bosley’s death, spoke to director and fellow Happy Days actor Ron Howard about Bosley.

“I’m so saddened by the loss of our wonderful Tom Bosley. Remarkable on so many levels, Tom’s insight, talent, strength of character and comic timing made him a vital central figure in the Happy Days experience.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Bald and the Beautiful

Richard Horgan — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:13:54 +0000

Forget about last week’s ranking by Forbes of the world’s 100 Most Powerful Women. In a town overrun with male braggadocio, the Bald 100 honor roll shared this week by GQ is going to undoubtedly be a far greater topic of conversation.

Perhaps Vin Diesel can bank on the idea that he is the top west coast industry rep on the list at #5 to spark a fresh round of meetings. Better yet, the lanky actor should have his people call Ron Howard‘s people to share a laugh over the fact that the director sits at #6. Meanwhile, it’s too bad Larry David isn’t currently in production on Curb Your Enthusiasm; he clocks in at #10, a few slides behind Samuel L. Jackson (#7), as the fourth and final member of L.A.’s gleaming chrome dome quartet.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Clooney Wanted To Direct ‘Frost/Nixon’ But Had To Take A Back Seat To Opie

Dan Cox — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:22:04 +0000

George Clooney reveals to the Brits that he was dying to direct “Frost/Nixon” but had abandon the idea because Ron Howard reared his head, Britain’s Daily Express reports.

Clooney apparently wanted to “kick ass” with this project, an approach that didn’t sit so well with Brit writer Peter Morgan, who penned the original play.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Old Television Shows Are Clearly in the Tank for Obama

Tina Dupuy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:44:07 +0000

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

This is Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler…uhm…making us appreciate all the no name no budget videos that are amazing and don’t leave us…so conflicted about whether it’s funny or should die.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.