Robert Downey Jr. calls 'Dolittle' a 'two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity'
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Remember when Robert Downey Jr. gave a squirrel CPR in a blockbuster flop? Well, he certainly does.
Following his exit from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Iron Man actor made plans to headline another potential franchise: Universal's Dolittle, a tale of a man who can talk to animals. But the project didn't turn out as Downey and his colleagues had hoped.
"I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in Dolittle," Downey explained in a recent New York Times profile. "I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies."
Coming off the monumental success of his MCU run — including the record-breaking Avengers: Endgame — another Downey franchise seemed like an easy sell. Dolittle even featured a star-studded supporting cast, with CGI animals voiced by the likes of Tom Holland, Emma Thompson, John Cena, Rami Malek and more. In the end, the film was a critical and financial failure.
Still, Robert Downey Jr. considers Dolittle one of the most important films he's ever made.
Universal Pictures Robert Downey Jr. in 'Dolittle'
He explained, "Honestly, the two most important films I've done in the last 25 years are The Shaggy Dog, because that was the film that got Disney saying they would insure me. Then the second most important film was Dolittle, because Dolittle was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity."
Downey added that the film, co-produced by his wife Susan Downey, was a stressful undertaking as "she rolled her sleeves up to her armpits to make it even serviceable enough to bring to market."
So why does he consider Dolittle such an important part of his filmography? Because it completely altered his outlook on choosing projects.
"After that point — what's that phrase? Never let a good crisis go to waste," Downey said. "We had this reset of priorities and made some changes in who our closest business advisers were."
Now, the movie star is set to go nuclear with Chrisopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. He'll make his comeback to the big screen as the antagonistic Lewis Strauss, who bitterly clashes with Cillian Murphy's J. Robert Oppenheimer.
"I don't know why I can relate to Lewis Strauss so much," Downey said. "But I felt like I was meant to play this role, and I knew I'd be in capable hands."
While speaking with EW during a Dolittle set visit, Downey said he was attracted to the project because it centered the kind of hero that the world desperately needed. "I felt myself living [at a time] where everybody just seemed to be screaming at each other across the aisle," he said. "I was like, here's a superhero, if you will, whose superpower is listening. His superhero superpower is empathy and I thought that'd be a great character to have today."
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