Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center isn’t his worst movie, but it’s among Ron Howard’s best movies. The film is a bland, cookie-cutter Hollywood piece of nonsense, and in my review, I compared it to the kind of work the ex-Opie and current Oscar whore does on the regular. Maybe Ron Howard read that and was inspired, since he’s now zeroing in on a new project about a subject Stone has covered: Nixon.
Last week Howard saw the new play Nixon/Frost in London’s West End and decided he had to have it. When you’re a big Hollywood director, that’s how things work. A number of studios tried to get the rights, but Universal ended up winning the deal, with Howard set to direct. There’s one stipulation: since the show is new, the movie has to wait until the play finishes London and hits Broadway.
The play stars Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as journalist David Frost, and is based around the 1977 interviews Frost did with the disgraced president. Playwright Peter Morgan will adapt it himself.