After Robert Downey Jr. dropped out of both Alfonso Cauron’s Gravity and Sam Raimi’s Oz, The Great and Powerful in recent months, I, along with many others, were left wondering what would be next. He surely has something up his sleeve, right?
Well, now it looks like a pairing with director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) could be on the horizon. Downey is said to be eying the role of 1960s stoner P.I. Larry “Doc” Sportello in Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice”. In the book Sportello is hired on by an ex-girlfriend to investigate the disappearance of her wealthy lover. Vulture reported a few weeks ago that Anderson was already more than halfway through a second draft of his adaptation.
It’s now unclear if Inherent Vice has overtaken The Master, the Scientology picture that was put on hold after Universal balked at its $35 million budget, as Anderson’s next project, but it looks like both projects have found financing in the form of Megan Ellison.
Ellison is the 25-year-old daughter of Oracle CEO and sixth richest person in the world Larry Ellison. She co-financed the Coens’ True Grit (which is nearing a $200 million worldwide gross) and will also fund the next film from The Road director John Hillcoat, a gangster film called The Wettest County in the World that will star the likes of Shia LeBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and many more.
It’s nice to know someone in Hollywood cares about good films being made.
At one point, The Master had Phillip Seymour Hoffman on board as the founder of a religion (“the Cause”) that would serve as an allegory for Scientology, with Jeremy Renner attached as Hoffman’s alcoholic acolyte. Renner has left for other projects, but Vulture believes Hoffman is still interested.
Here’s hoping we see both of these projects at some point, as it would be a crime against cinema for one of our generation’s finest filmmakers to be deprived of his voice due to lack of financing. But which would you rather see first?
Inherent Vice has cult-classic written all over it (I’m thinking Kiss Kiss Bang Bang meets The Big Lebowski), while the controversy sure to be stirred up by The Master should be quite interesting to watch develop.
