Today, we’ve received our first look at Joseph Gordon-Levitt as daredevil Philippe Petit in Robert Zemeckis’Â The Walk. And though it’s in no way an official shot from the movie, hailing from Facebook, we’re still excited to see Gordon-Levitt in character for the first time.
Though we personally preferred the title To Reach the Clouds for Zemeckis’ upcoming film about Petit, who in 1974 successfully strung a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked across it, the Flight director could really call his film whatever he wanted and we’d still go see it. After all, he’s recruited a tremendous actor in Gordon-Levitt, and his supporting cast is also stellar. Gordon-Levitt is pictured above with co-star Charlotte Le Bon, but The Walk also stars Ben Kingsley and James Badge Dale.
It will probably be a while until we see a trailer for The Walk, given that filming is currently under way and the movie isn’t set to open until October of next year, but we’ll really take anything we can get from a project as certain to be spectacular as this.
After years of working with animation on The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol (and producing other animated fare like Monster House and Mars Needs Moms) Zemeckis reasserted in Flight that he’s one of the best directors at utilizing special effects working today. Given what he did with the plane crash sequence in Flight (one of the finest and most terrifying ever committed to celluloid), it should be a thrill to see Zemeckis take on the perils of Petit’s walk between the towers. And there’s no reason to suspect that Gordon-Levitt, so terrific in 50/50, Don Jon and Looper, won’t manage to do justice to his character’s complex motivations for taking on the titular challenge.
The Walk will open on October 2nd, 2015.
