Noah Baumbach and Ron Howard?? Together? Isn’t that like nuts and gum, together at last? How do these two things go together? Well Ron Howard is signed on to direct the film, “The Emperor’s Children” and and the script is going to be adapted by the unlikely collaborator, Noah Baumbach according to Variety.
Weird, right? Maybe not, the novel is about Ivy League grads approaching their 30s with apprehension and Baumbach has essentially made a living making films about nervous, affluent, privileged, erudite East Coast eliters, so it actually might make a pretty perfect fit.
But milquetoaster Opie directing? Why didn’t they just give the director’s chair to Baumbach? Probably because it’s a big studio picture and Baumbach is untested in those waters – though the upcoming, “Margot At The Wedding” starring his biggest named cast, Nicole Kidman and Jack Black is surely going to change his cache come the fall when it get released. That’s it if it’s not a total bomb. His films don’t generally rake in boatloads of money, but Baumbach’s “comedy of manners” are critically revered and pretty damn excellent if we do say so (we did a If I Were Noah Baumbach playlist series in honor of his erudite and comedic films).
It’s also probably not a bad payday for him either, who up until recently, probably wasn’t bringing home megabucks. Variety also notes that the writer/director also delivered his adaptation of “Prep” to Lorne Michaels and John Goldwyn for Paramount’s adaptation of that novel. Will he direct this one? They don’t say, but it is another East Coast college tale where, “money was everywhere on campus, but it was usually invisible.”