It’s the Robert Downey Jr. Show! Something which could be said about both Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes – films which would have fallen flat on their cinematic faces if RDJ hadn’t been on board. Well now it looks like he’s about to lend his beard to a reworking of iconic detective Perry Mason.
Warner Bros. will be producing the film which Downey and co-producer David Gambino have come up with a story for. Now they’re just waiting for an appropriate writer to come on board so they can turn their idea into a screenplay.
Perry Mason will be most familiar to audiences in the TV series starring Raymond Burr (you know, Ironside) which aired in the late 50s and early 60s and was also revived for a string of TV movies in the 80s and 90s. They’re adapted from a long-running book series (82 novels and many short stories!) by Erle Stanley Gardner which were first published in 1933.
There was also a mammoth Radio series which spanned a whopping 3,257 episodes so Mason has been batted about a fair bit. Downey Jr. reported wants to stick to the character’s orginal 1930s LA roots. Let’s hope they keep the great theme tune too:
or if you like Ozzy Osbourne:
