There was hope that when he agreed to direct The Dilemma, Ron Howard was going to return to his comedy roots, but it seems that after his brief sejourn into the funny, he’s going to go back and make more serious movies again. And it certainly sounds like My Stroke Of Insight will be a pretty serious, potential Oscar-bait flick.
Deadline reports that Howard has agreed to direct the film based on Dr. Jull Bolte Taylor’s memoir detailing her recovery from a stroke. Taylor, a Harvard-trained neuro-anatomist, lost her ability to walk, read or write, or even recall past memories in a matter of hours, and it took her eight years to recover. However knowing how the brain worked, she was able to detail exactly how her recovery happened, as one side of her brain attempted to compensate for the damage to the other side.
Semi Chellas is on scripting duties, and apparently Howard wants Jodie Foster for the lead role. The actress would certainly be a sensible choice, but she’s known to be very picky, and spends most of her time being a mother, only occassionally making movies (she was last on our screens in 2008’s Nim’s Island, although she has directed the still to be released The Beaver since then). So whether she wants to play someone recovering from a stroke is yet to be seen.
Howard certainly likes to make a broad range of movies, and he’s one of the few directors to have had success virtually across the board, although this would be a particularly serious and weepie movie, even for him. Currently he’s also planning to direct the first film is trilogy based on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.