Robert Downey Jr. will have to tackle a role once made famous by James Stewart, and he’s looking forward to the daunting task.
The Iron Man actor is moving away from his superhero blockbusters with this year’s Oppenheimer and is developing a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Downey Jr. spoke about tackling the film and why his experience with ock-climbing opened up his desire for a new Vertigo.
The actor expresses, “We are certainly looking into it. You know why? God bless. I’ll tell you why. I have been rock climbing before and gotten stuck in that panic freeze, and if not for the sheer embarrassment, I would have asked to have been hoisted off that rock. I lost my confidence in my positioning, the drop was too far, and my body reacted. It wasn’t fight-or-flight; it was freeze-and-about-to-faint.”
He adds, “I’ll never forget it, and it made me think there are cinematic devices that have yet to be fully utilized that I think would provide an experience in trying to say, ‘What does it feel like to be psychologically silly with fear over something that should be manageable?’ That might be entertaining.”
The original Vertigo was one of Hitchcock’s most famous works. James Stewart leads the film as John “Scottie” Ferguson, a former police detective forced to retire after a line-of-duty trauma leaves him with intense acrophobia (fear of heights). Gavin Elster later hires him to follow Gavin’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), who behaves strangely.
It would later have a critical re-evaluation after failing to connect with its original audience. It would even replace Citizen Kane as “the greatest film ever made” in The Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time 2012 poll.
Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) will pen the script. John Davis and John Fox will produce alongside Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan Downey. At the time of writing, there’s no director attached.
