Robert Downey Jr eyes lead role in remake of Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’

LOS ANGELES: The rights for the late filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 cult classic psychological thriller 'Vertigo' have been secured by Paramount Pictures.

'Iron Man' star Robert Downey Jr is reportedly in the talks for playing the lead. The actor is producing the project with his wife Susan Downey through their Team Downey production company, along with John Davis and John Fox via Davis Entertainment, reports Variety. 'Peaky Blinders' creator Steven Knight is set to write the script, hot on the heels of his commitment to write an untitled 'Star Wars' movie for Lucasfilm, as Variety reported on Wednesday.

Downey has kept a low profile as an actor since the release of 2019's 'Avengers: Endgame', which is one of the highest grossing movies ever made, and 2020's 'Dolittle'. He produced and appeared in the documentary 'Sr.,' about his father, and he's next set to appear this July in Christopher Nolan's historical epic 'Oppenheimer' opposite Cillian Murphy.

As per Variety, the original 'Vertigo' starred James Stewart as John Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco police detective who retires due to a paralysing fear of heights brought on by a severe case of vertigo. After he's hired to tail an acquaintance's wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), Scottie becomes obsessed with her, but his fears render him powerless to save her when she climbs the tower of a Spanish Mission and plunges to her death. And then things get truly strange.

'Vertigo' was not a smash success when it was first released in theatres, and it divided critics. But by the 1980s, it started to gain recognition as a masterpiece. In 1982, in a survey of the best movies ever made by the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound publication (conducted every 10 years), 'Vertigo' cracked the top 10, and continued to climb the list, reaching the number one slot in the 2012 survey.