Before Ron Howard became the acclaimed filmmaker behind Willow, Apollo 13, and A Beautiful Mind, he was best known as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. While Howard was meant to be the star of the show, his clean-cut hero was soon eclipsed by Henry Winkler’s effortlessly cool Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli, who quickly stole the spotlight and the audience’s hearts. In fact, the character became so popular that the producers were considering changing the title to Fonzie’s Happy Days, and they might have done it had Howard not threatened to leave.
“I never, ever challenged what they were doing creatively. It made perfect sense that you’d build this Fonzie character and maximize that,” Howard told Vulture. “But the optics of now being in a show called ‘Fonzie’s Happy Days, my ego wouldn’t allow for that. I wasn’t bluffing. I would’ve left. And my contract, I’m sure, had no clause connected to titles. They could have said, ‘F*** you. We changed the title, and we expect you to show up Monday morning.’ But thank God for great bosses. Garry Marshall said, ‘If you’re not cool with it …’“
Howard continued, “I later found out Henry himself thought it was a terrible idea. I think the position I took made it easy for both Garry and Henry to also say, ‘No, let’s not do that.’ Years later, Henry said they were ready to do a spinoff and other things for Fonzie and he just said, ‘Why fix it if it’s not broken? My success depends on the ensemble I’m in.’“
Howard ultimately left Happy Days after seven seasons to pursue his directing career full-time, leaving Winkler to take center stage for the remaining four seasons.
Eden, Howard’s next film, is set to be released on August 22. The survival thriller “unravels the shocking true story of a group of disillusioned outsiders (Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl, and Sydney Sweeney) who abandon modern society in search of a new beginning. Settling on a remote, uninhabited island, their utopian dream quickly unravels as they discover that the greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other. What follows is a chilling descent into chaos where tensions spiral, desperation takes hold, and a twisted power struggle leads to betrayal, violence, and the deaths of half the colony.“
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