Ron Howard Directing Stretch Armstrong Movie?

Published by Jeff Leins on: June 13th, 2009

BusinessWeek published an article Friday titled “With Transformers, Hasbro Morphs Its Toy-Movie Model” about the toy giant’s brand expanding onto the big screen.  It scratches the surface of Hasbro’s six-year partnership with Universal to adapt several game properties into movies, but it also mentions a small tidbit we’ve never seen before.

The business magazine claims Ron Howard is directing the new Stretch Armstrong movie slated for April 2011.  It includes the news briefly and without further details, so we don’t know much more than that.  This fits with the announcement earlier this month of producer Brian Grazer (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind) coming on board, who has a close working relationship with Howard.  When I say close, I mean they’ve made over 15 movies together, and they co-founded the production company Imagine Entertainment.

Overall, the idea of Howard directing sounds outrageous, but no more ridiculous than making a movie out of Stretch Armstrong and luring Oscar-winning talent to produce it.  It gets stranger.  Steve Oedekerk (Bruce Almighty, Ace Venture 2, Nutty Professor) is writing this “superhero comedy.”  Ridley Scott is even attached to the Monopoly movie.  What is going on here?

In related news, Howard’s 28-year-old daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard) recently sold her first script.  Of course, Imagine bought it.  The Originals is an “ensemble film about a group of twenty somethings” (could there be a role for herself in there?) and it’s possibly being set up for her father to direct.