It's a long while since we've heard anything about Robert Downey Jr.'s in-development** Yucatan**, based on an unfilmed treatment by the late Steve McQueen. There's news of further progress this morning, however, with reports that Pirates Of The Caribbean** writer Terry Rossio has been brought in for a new draft of the screenplay.
Yucatan was a film that McQueen was actively developing in the late 1960s, but he never got it going before his untimely death in 1980. He filled over 1500 pages in a dozen notebooks, with script notes and storyboards detailing an underwater heist thriller. He'd have played the lead role of "a renegade deep sea salvage expert", hired to uncover a mysterious treasure horde buried deep underwater in the titular Mayan ruins.
Warners have wanted to get the project up and running again since it was unearthed by McQueen's sons in 2005. McG and David Heyman were involved with previous incarnations, and Downey and his production company have been attached since 2010.
With McQueen's treatment in no workable state, however, it's no surprise that Team Downey have struggled with the script. Anthony Peckham (Sherlock Holmes) was the most recent screenwriter to take a crack. Deadline believe that McQueen's exceptionally detailed concepts are baing used simply as "a jumping off point for a mind-bending adventure story".
Downey and his wife Susan are producing Yucatan along with Dan Lin, and the project is, naturally enough, being seen as a potential star vehicle for the once and future Tony Stark. When the screenplay's finally sorted, next they'll need a director...