Robert Downey Jr. Is Remaking The Greatest Film Of All Time
Robert Downey Jr. is set to star in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller, Vertigo.
You don’t have to be a scholar of classic cinema to understand that Alfred Hitchcock had a profound influence on Hollywood that we are still feeling to this day. It’s only natural, then, that we’d get remakes of his most famous works to help extend the director’s influence to new generations of moviegoers. Now, Deadline is reporting that Paramount Pictures is looking to remake Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, and they want the film to start Marvel Cinematic Universe darling Robert Downey Jr.
In the original Vertigo, James Stewart plays a police officer who encounters major trauma on the job, and this trauma gives him a profound sense of both acrophobia and (you guessed it) vertigo. He must retire because of this, but he is able to put his police skills to use when an acquaintance hires him to begin shadowing his wife in order to uncover more about why she has been acting so erratically. If Paramount gets its way, Robert Downey Jr. will play the police officer character once played by Stewart.
Paramount was the studio that brought us the original Vertigo, and because of that, Alfred Hitchcock’s estate wanted Paramount to be the studio behind this ambitious remake. Only time will tell, though, if this remake ends up revolutionizing Hollywood filmmaking as the original did. It was the 1958 film that introduced audiences to the dolly zoom technique that is perfect for showing us a character’s distorted perception of the world, a technique that is still used to this day.
It will be interesting to see if this exact technique is used in the newer movie to show us how a traumatized Robert Downey Jr. often sees the world around him.
And while Robert Downey Jr. is obviously the big draw for this remake, it’s worth noting that the film has some other serious talent behind it. This includes a script written by Steven Knight, the man who created the series See as well as Peaky Blinders. He’ll also be writing a Star Wars script in the very near future, so we’re excited to see what somebody with this man’s talents can do to reinvent Hitchcock’s classic tale for modern audiences.
It also looks like Robert Downey Jr. is personally committed to making this film a success. It will be produced by Team Downey which, as the name implies, is comprised of both the former Iron Man actor and his wife, Susan Downey. Behind the scenes, this is the same production team that has given us Perry Mason, the hit series on HBO.
With Robert Downey Jr. set to both star in and produce this remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it seems like the movie is in very good hands, and it will hopefully be more of a success than the disappointing 1998 remake of Psycho. The bigger question is whether audiences that fell in love with the actor kicking ass as Iron Man will enjoy the slower pace of this classic thriller (or, for that matter, if the pace will be amped up to suit modern audiences’ tastes).
In our opinion, though, just as the onscreen Iron Man finally deserved to rest after saving the universe, Robert Downey Jr. deserves to do meaty character roles after almost singlehandedly saving the superhero genre back in 2008.
