He’s back in adventure mode for In The Heart Of The Sea next month, but Ron Howard has his eyes on a potential new thriller, book adaptation The Girl Before.
Regular Howard collaborator Universal snapped up the rights to J.P. Delaney’s novel, one that isn’t scheduled to arrive on shelves both virtual and physical until autumn next year. But the likes of Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer clearly saw something in the book and pounced, with Howard now attached to potentially direct.
The story follows a traumatized woman who becomes fascinated by an amazing minimalist house and falls for the man who designed it. Then she discovers that three years before, another damaged woman lived and died there, and she begins to wonder if she’s simply in a repeat of that situation. If only the estate agent had thought to mention that.
This one is still in the very early stages, with no writer or other creative folk aboard yet. But those needing their fix of Howard adapting books can be content with the aforementioned In The Heart Of The Sea, which is drawn from Nathaniel Philbrick’s non-fiction tome and arrives in the UK on December 26, and his latest Dan Brown-based film, Inferno, featuring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon and out here on October 14 next year.