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Robert Downey Jr and Columbia Pictures Have an 'Emergency!'

by Ethan Anderton
October 20, 2010

We recently heard about a new starring vehicle for Robert Downey, Jr. in the form of Yucatan, the first priority project for Team Downey, the production banner founded by the actor and his wife Susan Downey. Now Team Downey has another project in the works as Columbia Pictures has announced, via press release, their option of the rights to Neil Strauss' non-fiction book Emergency!: This Book Will Save Your Life. In addition to producing the project, there's a chance that Downey could star in the film as well. Also, much buzzed about screenwriter Allan Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) will script the adaptation.

If you're unfamiliar with the book, Columbia's press release describes the material like this:

'Emergency' traces one man’s story of a dangerous world–and how to stay alive in it or die trying. It is Strauss’s white-knuckled journey through a country that’s lost its sense of safety, as one man equips himself with the tools necessary to save himself and his loved ones from an uncertain future. He sets out to move his life offshore, and in the process, he learns to survive in the wild, and remake himself as a gun-toting, lock-picking, plane-flying, government-defying survivor. It’s a tale of paranoid fantasies and crippling doubts, of shady lawyers and dangerous cult leaders, of billionaire gun nuts and survivalist superheroes, of weirdoes, heroes, and ordinary citizens taking their families off the grid.

Sounds like some sort of coming-of-age, alternate reality version of Tony Stark where he didn't become Iron Man. Downey's comeback has proven to be truly remarkable after his bouts with substance abuse so many years ago. In addition to rising from the ashes with an insanely successful acting career, it's good to see him moving behind-the-scenes, and even producing his own projects as he continues to make waves in the industry that almost killed him previously. As long as Downey keeps making intriguing projects like this and the forthcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful, I don't think he'll be slowing down anytime soon. Sound good?

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