Team Downey: Celebs Rumors

What works theatrically? And how do you turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ for a passion project in an everchanging entertainment landscape where there’s a push and pull between the big screen and streaming?

As another Guy Ritchie movie hits theaters this weekend, “The Covenant,” Hollywood finds the director in the most prolific chapter of his career. Ritchie’s done five films in four years, with another, “The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” filming now.

EXCLUSIVE: After festival premieres in Telluride, AFI and New York, the Chris Smith-directed documentary Sr. just began its run on Netflix. What began as a docu about Robert Downey Sr, the ’60s counterculture director of avant garde films like Putney Swope and Greaser’s Palace, Sr. evolved into much more as the process stretched over three years due to the pandemic and the decline of the subject’s health. Robert Downey Jr., who spurned Smith’s offer to make a docu about his life and career, became more of a central figure onscreen, along with producing with wife and Team Downey partner Susan Downey. On full display is all the mad wit that informed Downey Sr’s films (Paul Thomas Anderson considered Downey Sr. a formative influence and put him in Boogie Nights and Magnolia). Sr. became something you don’t see often: candor from two generations of a film family that got chewed up but managed to come out the other side intact, bonding and healing before Downey Sr. succumbed to Parkinson’s in July 2021 at age 85. Here, his Jr. describes what the journey means to him.

EXCLUSIVE: Kelly Kovacs has been upped at Iron Ocean Productions.

Apple is getting in on the Robert Downey, Jr. business in yet another attempt for the tech company to build its streaming platform with the help of some of the biggest names in Hollywood.