5 Immortal Facts About ‘Cocoon,’ Ron Howard’s Sci-Fi Classic

COCOON, Steve Guttenberg, 1985, — 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett Collection

Beyond the innocence of youth and the wisdom of age lies the wonder of Cocoon, as the tagline goes. The Ron Howard film stars Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Brian Dennehy, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, and others in a sci-fi story about retirement-home residents getting a shot at immortality through close encounters of the third kind.

Cocoon hit theaters four decades ago, on June 21, 1985, and Ameche and the film’s visual effects team won Oscar gold for their work on the film. Three years alter, most of the cast reunited for the sequel, 1988’s Cocoon: The Return. And if you’re ready to return to the Cocoon, too, check out the trivia below.

1 Ron Howard replaced Robert Zemeckis as director

COCOON, Director Ron Howard, Steve Guttenberg on set, 1985,

After suffering box-office flops with his films I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars and spooking 20th Century Fox executives with his work on Romancing the Stone, Robert Zemeckis lost his gig directing Cocoon, even though he’d spent a year developing the film.

“When I showed Fox the finished Stone, they thought it was a disaster,” Zemeckis told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “They were all very nervous in those days, and Cocoon was budgeted at $15 million. They said, ‘We can’t give this guy another movie to make!’ So they fired me.”

As it turned out, Romancing the Stone was a big success for the studio, and Zemeckis’s career continued to flourish with hits like Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Forrest Gump.

2 The film was a family affair for Howard — and for Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn

Howard’s father, Rance, plays a police detective in the movie; his mother, Jean, has an uncredited background role; and his brother, Clint, plays John Dexter.

By the time Tandy and Cronyn costarred in Cocoon, meanwhile, they’d been married for more than 40 years. The couple also appeared together in the films The Seventh Cross, The World According to Garp, and *batteries not included, as well as the TV movies Foxfire and To Dance with the White Dog.

Speaking of famous family members, the Cocoon cast also includes Tyrone Power Jr., son of Ameche’s frequent 1930s costar Tyrone Power, and Tahnee Welch, daughter of Raquel Welch, in her American film debut.

3 Wilford Brimley had to be aged up for his role

COCOON, Wilford Brimley, Maureen Stapleton, 1985,

Relative to other Cocoon stars, Brimley was a spring chicken. He was 49 when he was cast as Ben Luckett, born just 10 years before his Cocoon daughter, Linda Harrison. The actor had to be aged up for the part, with his mustache dyed white and fake liver spots painted on, per The Times.

Brimley’s age while filming Cocoon has become a meme in recent years, especially in comparison to action hero Tom Cruise, who continued to film Mission: Impossible movies in his 50s. Now there’s an X account that announces when celebrities cross the “Brimley/Cocoon Line,” or 18,530 days old, which was the actor’s age when Cocoon reached theaters.

4 Brimley made Howard’s job challenging, but had the director’s respect

COCOON, Barret Oliver, Wilford Brimley, 1985,

Howard told Harvard Business Review in 2023 that Brimley was “tough” on him while filming Cocoon. “I had to deal with him very differently than I dealt with anybody else, and it was sometimes unpleasant,” the filmmaker said.

But Howard did give props to Brimley’s performance. “As a great improvisational actor, he also elevated the tone and brought a naturalism and an honesty to Cocoon,” he said of the actor. “I recognized that was tricky but also exactly what that sci-fi, seriocomic movie needed, and I made it my business to navigate that and not let him make the set too toxic for the others to flourish.”

5 Hume Cronyn accidentally knocked out Clint Howard

COCOON, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, 1985

In his memoir The Guttenberg Bible, costar Steve Guttenberg said “something surprising was always happening” on the Cocoon set. “Like when Hume Cronyn punched Ron’s brother, Clint, out cold,” he recalled.

As Guttenberg explained, Hume, then in his 70s, was once a Golden Gloves contender, albeit fifty years earlier. “But a right cross is a right cross,” he said. “He was supposed to air-punch Clint after Clint’s character mouths off. But Hume really connected. Word was that Clint was out for a minute or two. Even though it was a pain for Clint, it made for another good story at the dinner table.”