LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Downey Jr thinks courtrooms are dull.
That didn’t stop the The Avengers leading man from landing on The Judge as the inaugural film from his production company Team Downey, which he formed with his wife, Susan. Other than the 2010 buddy comedy Due Date, the legal family drama marks Downey’s first movie in five years that doesn’t star the 49-year-old actor as either Iron Man or Sherlock Holmes.
In the film, conceived of and directed by Wedding Crashers filmmaker David Dobkin, Downey plays a Chicago lawyer who returns to his small Indiana hometown to attend his mother’s funeral.
While there, Downey’s stubborn motor-mouth becomes enmeshed in a criminal case involving his more stubborn father, the town’s judge, portrayed by Robert Duvall.
“I’ve done lawyers before and it’s like, ‘Dude, really? Courtrooms? So boring’,” Downey recently acknowledged over a cup of coffee. “The idea David (Dobkin) had was that a lawyer would be able to get his father – when he’s sworn in – to tell the truth. How could you not take advantage of that, with his life on the line and all the stuff that’s happened between them?”
After saving the world as Tony Stark in four Marvel films, Downey said he wasn’t necessarily looking to make the 180-degree turn that he does in The Judge, out next Friday. (Besides, Iron Man will be back in next year’s Avengers instalment.)
Downey and Susan, a long-time producer he first met on the set of the 2003 thriller Gothika, were merely drawn to the story.
Dobkin, known for goofy comedies like Fred Claus and The Change-Up, always envisioned Downey in the role.
