Vince Valitutti / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures
Ron Howard is debating how humble his humblebrag should be. (One would think that, once you get to be Ron Howard, you’d feel secure in some healthy boasting, but here we are.) After some starting and stopping, he goes for it: Thirteen Lives tested higher with audiences—meaning more positively—than any film he’s directed in his entire career.
“Even more than Apollo 13, Rush, and A Beautiful Mind,” he adds. “And they tested high.”
Thirteen Lives, which began streaming on Amazon in August, is in the midst of an award-season push, a familiar effort for the two-time Oscar-winning director and producer. It chronicles the harrowing story of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, in which 10,000 volunteers from all over the world rallied to save 12 boys and their soccer coach, who became trapped in a flooded cave. With the attention of the world on them, a group of elite divers worked in concert with the government and local farmers to stage what should have been impossible: the safe recovery of the entire team, after 18 excruciating days.