Fans of Man On Wire – and that’s most of the Academy who voted it Best Documentary in 2008 – will be getting another telling of Philippe Petit’s story with The Walk. This time it’s a feature film, with Robert Zemeckis taking on the story that James Marsh told some enthrallingly and Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the impish French high-wire walker. The film has a new poster lending some sense of awe and vertigo.
Like Marsh's doc, Zemeckis' film seems likely to pitch the yarn as a kind of heist thriller by other means. "He wasn't trying to steal money or sell plutonium," says the director, who interviewed Petit for hours, adapting 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.”
"Gravity meets Ocean's Eleven" is how Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Tom Rothman pitches it. "You've got an underdog team planning what's actually an endearing crime."
Alongside Gordon-Levitt are Charlotte Le Bon as Petit’s girlfriend Annie Allix, Ben Schwartz as his team member and Ben Kingsley as Petit’s mentor, Papa Rudy. James Badge Dale also appears in so-far unspecific role, hopefully as the man who wobbles the cable at the other end shouting "Whoooah! Watch out!". The Walk makes its UK theatrical bow on October 2.