Robert Zemeckis has been hard at work on his film based on the exploits of Man On Wire subject Philippe Petit, who high-wire walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. It has a new name – The Walk – and the first pictures are online via USA Today.
Talking about the project to the paper’s site, producer Tom Rothman reaches for one of those old standbys of movie hype, the mash-up. "This is Gravity meets Ocean's Eleven," he says. "You've got an underdog team planning what's actually an endearing crime."
"He wasn't trying to steal money or sell plutonium," says Zemeckis, who interviewed Petit for hours, and adapted the script with Christopher Browne from the performance artist’s memoir To Reach The Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between The Twin Towers. "He was just trying to create performance art. And he created this beautiful, human moment that changed the way we looked at the towers."
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing Petit, with Charlotte Le Bonn, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz and Ben Kingsley also among the cast. For more from Rothman and Zemeckis, head to USA Today’s site. The Walk is scheduled to arrive here on October 2, 2015.