The rate at which Imagine Pictures' Brian Grazer has been acquiring screen rights lately, Ron Howard must be rubbing his hands with glee. Howard is Grazer's go-to director, what with the pair having enjoyed a creative partnership that reaches all the way back to Howard's directorial debut, 1982's Nightshift, and carries on through Splash, Parenthood, Backdraft, Far And Away, The Paper, Apollo 13, Ransom, The Grinch, The Missing, The Da Vinci Code, and into the forthcoming East Of Eden and Angels & Demons. Now you can all but add a remake of the French thriller Cache (released in the UK as Hidden).
Yes, Grazer now has the legal right to make an English language version of Michael Haneke's near-unbearably tense thriller. He bought them from Plum Pictures, and he's got the piece of paper to prove it and everything. But there's no guarantee yet that Howard will step into his comfy director's shoes for this one, as he's got a pretty full slate at the moment, and his non-Grazer projects include **The Look Of Real ** (which may star his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, and concerns the world of fashion and fabric), and most interestingly, an adaptation of the play Frost / Nixon. So it's a case of 'we'll see', and Grazer may yet offer the project to another member of his A-list director pool. Ridley Scott, perhaps?
The bad news is, there's going to be some messing around with Haneke's pretty much perfect script. There are rumblings (albeit unconfirmed ones) that the U.S. version will contain 'amped up suspense and consequences', at least according to Variety. We hope not, and there's plenty of time to revert to a more traditional version – there's no script, cast, production deadline or release date.