The Inherent Vice writer will polish up the script and possibly direct the Team Downey project.
[toggler title=”TL;DR” ]Robert Downey Jr. and Paul Thomas Anderson will work together on Team Downey’s live-action Pinocchio remake. Downey will star as Geppetto, while Anderson will write and possibly direct.[/toggler]
[dropcap size=small]P[/dropcap]aul Thomas Anderson has been hired to write a draft of Team Downey’s Pinocchio. You might think that Anderson, whose writing credits include movies such as There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice, will be way outside his comfort zone working on a live-action version of a Disney classic, but he would only be tweaking the latest draft, written by The Giver‘s Michael Mitnick, and he and Downey, who are good friends, have been waiting for work together for a long time.
Downey was the frontrunner for the lead in Inherent Vice, until his Age of Ultron contract got in the way and Joaquin Phoenix replaced him. Now it seems as though the pair will get their wish, and that Anderson may also direct Pinocchio. Downey will be desperate to speed up the process now that he has such a big name attached to write and possibly direct, as he looks to cash in on the current craze of turning Disney movies into live-action money-spinners.
Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent made $758 million worldwide last year, and this year’s Cinderella has already passed half-a-billion dollars. Emma Watson will star in Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast in 2017, Universal is working on The Little Mermaid and two versions of The Jungle Book are being developed. One will be directed by Jon Favreau for Disney, the other will star Benedict Cumberbatch, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett in CGI-heavy roles for Warner Bros.
And it’s Warner Bros. who will produce Pinocchio alongside Team Downey and Dan Jinks (Milk). Downey will play Geppetto, who creates the puppet who wants to break free of his strings, a strangely similar role to the one he played in Ultron. There’s no word on when the film will be released just yet, but now that Anderson is on board, we can probably expect it to come out in the midst of these other Disney projects, some time around 2017.
You can next see Downey in action in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War.
