Ron Howard takes Glen Powell back to Backdraft with a new firefighter drama

Glen Powell? Playing a firefighter? The devil you say!

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  June 17, 2025 | 2:06pm
Photo by Greg Doherty (Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)
Film News Glen Powell
Ron Howard takes Glen Powell back to Backdraft with a new firefighter drama
Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

Director Ron Howard is going out on a limb with the star of his firefighter drama, like a cat in need of a fireman. Suspend disbelief, dear reader, for this is some stunt casting with a capital “S.” Howard has cast Glen Powell as a firefighter. Best known for playing hunky fighter pilots and outlaw storm chasers who are afraid to kiss their crush, Powell will have the unenviable task of convincing audiences that he could appear shirtless in a calendar. It’s strange casting for a man so attractive that he’s now the star of a TV show where he has to masquerade as an uggo to save his collapsing pro football career (Chad Powers coming to Hulu this fall).

Per Hollywood Reporter, the Untitled Ron Howard/Glen Powell Firefighter Project is coming from Amazon MGM Studios. That doesn’t necessarily mean the film is going straight to streaming, but when you’ve got a hot property, starring a big star and a name director, the best thing to do is put it on a streaming service where audiences don’t have to shell out money to see it.

Howard is no stranger to firefighter dramas, having helmed the 1991 blockbuster Backdraft, starring Kurt Russell, Robert De Niro, and William Baldwin. As far as we know, this is not a sequel to Backdraft, but rather the story of two estranged best friends, both big-time firemen, working through some interpersonal issues while Texas burns. That’s the second Texas-set fire-based film we’ve heard about this week. In the other, The Lost Bus, Matthew McConaughey plays a school bus driver saving a gaggle of children from the Texas wildfires. One more and it’s a trend.

 
Join the discussion...