Glen Powell is taking on fire next with director Ron Howard
For those of us who remember the Universal Backdraft attraction, this one is for us. Or for me as a Glen Powell fan who also happens to love the movie Backdraft.
News broke that Glen Powell will be teaming up with Ron Howard to bring to life an untitled firefighter movie from Birds of Prey scribe, Christina Hodson. According to Deadline, the film will follow two childhood friends who are now “elite firefighters” who must fix their broken friendship in order to save Texas after a series of deadly fires have broken out across the state.
Howard directing the movie does excite me. The director hasn’t gone back into the world of firefighters since the 1991 film. That was 34 years ago. Since, the film has been a staple in both the thriller genre and in understanding how fires work. Or maybe that’s just how I felt after doing the Backdraft attraction at Universal Studios in Los Angeles (I miss her!).
We don’t know much else about the film but there is a lot here to get excited about. Not only is Howard directing a firefighter movie exciting but Powell tackling yet another iconic genre from the past and bringing it back to us is thrilling as well. Pair that with a script from Hodson, whose work has always bee brilliant to me, makes this a slam dunk in my eyes.
I’ve missed films like this
Growing up in the 90s meant that I had some pretty great films coming out. I was born the year Backdraft came out and then in 2004, I saw Ladder 49 in theaters and cried. It isn’t that we don’t have fire movies, we do. Only the Brave was released in 2017 and the Angelina Jolie led Those Who Wish Me Dead came out in 2021. But it hasn’t been the same.
It goes back to Powell bringing back the disaster movie back with Twisters. We’ve lost these genre movies because they are big budget films but they’re also big cinematic experiences. Seeing Twisters in 4DX was life changing and I love that we can return to these worlds and still find stories in the genres.
Until we know more, there is a lot to love here and I cannot wait to see what they all have in store for us!
(featured image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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