Ron Howard to direct adaptation of The Girl Before

By Sam Barsanti | November 29, 2015 | 10:44pm

Aux Features Film

With his In The Heart Of The Sea set to thrill audiences who have always wanted to see Thor get eaten by a whale in a few weeks, Ron Howard has already lined up his next directing gig. This comes from Deadline, which reports that—like most Ron Howard directing gigs—this one is based on a book. The exciting twist this time is that the book—The Girl Before, by J.P. Delaney—hasn’t been published yet. Deadline says it’s about “a traumatized woman” who finds a really cool house and falls in love with the guy who designed it. Eventually, though, she finds out that “another damaged woman” died there a few years ago, forcing her to wonder if her life is “just a re-run of the girl before.” (Hey, that’s the title!)

There’s also some speculation that the Girl Before book was written by novelist Tony Strong under a pseudonym, but that sounds like the sort of thing that Howard and Universal should’ve figured out before they picked up the rights to this. Deadline also notes that this is “yet another big publishing/movie deal for a thriller book with a woman in jeopardy and with the word ‘girl’ in the title,” which is more of a fun fact than an important detail, unless the success of Gone Girl means that audiences are really into movies with “girl” in the title.