Looks like Robert Downey Jr. will be played a different sort of Doctor as he’s just been cast for the lead role in the upcoming The Voyage of Dr. Dolittle movie.
The star, well-known as Marvel’s Iron Man, has been cast as Doctor Dolittle, in a new film from Universal Pictures that is based off Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle series of children’s books. An early draft of the movie was written by Tom Shepherd, and Academy Award-winner Stephen Gaghan will be re-writing the original script and directing the film.
Susan Downey (of Team Downey) will be producing the film alongside Joe Roth and Jeff Kirschenbaum of Roth/Kirschenbaum Films.
There’s no word on the actual plot yet, but as the books are set in the Victorian-era (think Sherlock Holmes, something Downey is also involved in) so we could expect that or a more modern reimagining, like the 1998 film with Eddie Murphy. However, the movie title is the same as the second of Lofting’s books, wherein Dolittle and his assistant, Tommy Stubbins travel to Polynesia in search of Long Arrow, the world’s greatest naturalist that’s gone missing.
Of course, be expecting a lot of talking animals as Doctor Dolittle is able to understand them.
We’ll be keeping our ear to the ground for more developments.