The awful movie Ron Howard instantly regretted

(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)

Tue 11 February 2025 19:45, UK

There are very few guarantees that any movie is destined to be a hit, but it must sting a lot more for a filmmaker to persevere through years of development only to end up with a stinker on their hands. For Ron Howard, it didn’t take him long to realise the error of his ways, even if it was far too little and way too late.

As one of the highest-grossing directors of all time, the two-time Academy Award winner clearly knows how to appeal to the widest possible audience. He may not have an identifiable style or carry any of the qualities typically associated with an auteur, but his track record of success speaks for itself.

Howard, for what he lacks in style and showmanship, more than makes up for in consistency. Obviously, there have been several notable missteps along the way, but nobody spends half a century directing movies and steers them to almost $4.5billion at the box office without knowing what they’re doing.

Still, it was a colossal waste of time for the filmmaker to dedicate so many years and effort to what should have been an epic, sprawling fantasy blockbuster just to emerge on the other side with nothing but embarrassment and regret. He didn’t even direct the film either, but he was every bit as complicit.

Often heralded as Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower had limitless potential, something Sony sought to capitalise on by developing an entire universe spread across film and television that would have done justice to the author’s expansive world-building and intricate storytelling.

Howard was announced in April 2010 as the director and producer of a feature-length trilogy and the executive producer of an accompanying episodic series. He remained attached for the next five years, weathering multiple setbacks and delays. Even when Nikolaj Arcel was revealed as his replacement behind the camera in July 2015, he remained on board and actively involved as a producer.

Hacked to pieces in the editing room, calling The Dark Tower a bust would be an understatement. Instantly taking its place among the bottom rung of King adaptations, it was unanimously panned and cost the studio a small fortune. Hindsight is always 20/20, though, something Howard acknowledged.

“I think it should’ve been horror,” he confessed. “I think it landed in a place, both in our minds and the studio’s, that it could be PG-13 and sort of a boy’s adventure. I really think we made a mistake.” It’s hard to argue when the movie was nothing short of woeful, but apparently, it never crossed Howard’s mind to make any of those decisions during the half-decade he spent working on it.

In an instant, any talk of sequels and spinoffs had evaporated. While Sony deserves a fair share of the blame for becoming too actively involved in post-production to the film’s detriment, it’s not as if someone as experienced, influential, and powerful as Howard couldn’t have seen those alarm bells ringing long before The Dark Tower imploded on impact at the multiplex.