Back last December, we reported that Paul Thomas Anderson had had to put plans to make his cult pseudo-religion drama The Master on ice because of studio worries about the budget. But things have moved on for both that project and the director’s adaptation of novelist Thomas Pynchon’s stoner detective tale Inherent Vice, with word that the director looks to have locked in funding from billionaire heiress Megan Ellison. And the even better news on the Vice front? Robert Downey Jr is now seriously considering starring.
When Anderson made the switch from focusing on The Master to Vice, Downey Jr’s name was floated as the writer/director’s top choice to play Larry “Doc” Sportello, a pot-happy private eye who shuffles around late 1960s/early 1970s Los Angeles, a time when the Manson Family trial was on everyone’s mind. Doc is tasked by an old flame to help stop real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann from being consigned to a mental institution by his scheming wife. The mystery deepens and our hero finds himself in the middle of a bigger conspiracy.
Downey Jr, of course, used to have a packed schedule of films to shoot this year, but after dropping out of Oz, The Great and Powerful and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, his diary is a lot clearer. He does have The Avengers to work on and several projects in development, but The Hollywood Reporter has it that he’s now making Vice a priority.
Which is good news for both Anderson and us, particularly if it means he’ll get to make both of the dream projects a reality…