Ron Howard‘s always got more than a few irons in the fire, and he’s about to add one more. Universal has acquired “364,” a ridiculous-sounding pitch from David Guggenheim, the writer of the upcoming Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds starrer “Safe House.” The story concerns a man who spends exactly 364 days of the year trying to plan how he’ll spend the one day annually in which he has super powers. So, a seasonal Superman.
We don’t know where to begin in hating every inch of this. Guggenheim, a former editor at noted bastion of creativity US Weekly, remains unproven as we have yet to see any of his work, though the “Safe House” script started a bidding war, and he’s got two other projects set up in “Santiago” at Fox and “Puzzle Palace” at Summit. He’s hot now, but you never know which guy is going to become the next Justin Marks or Allan Loeb, a writer who gets hot before a single word has been shot, only to be revealed as an unbearable hack. And then that premise… so this is a movie about… planning? How arbitrary does the “one day of superpowers” thing seem? Even Sean Connery circa “Highlander” would scoff at this kind of magic. Plus, super powers? Because we don’t have enough movies about superpowered people? Though we do hope day 365 is spent hoarding all the world’s donuts.
Howard, the Most Boring Director In Hollywood, has his choice of upcoming projects after “The Dark Tower” stalled at Universal. It’s believed his next movie is the racing picture “Rush,” though other possibilities include a genuinely bad idea in a live-action “Spy Vs. Spy,” the fantasy-tinged, possibly written-on-a-cocktail-napkin pitch for “Amnesty,” and the murderin’ Mormon saga of “Under The Banner Of Heaven.”