Screening Series: ‘The Judge’: How Team Downey found its first movie
Producer Susan Downey explains why she and Robert Downey Jr. picked “The Judge” for their company’s first project in this highlight from the Envelope Screening Series presentation of the film.
Robert Downey Jr. and wife Susan Downey started their own production company -- Team Downey -- four years ago and the first fruit of that effort, the crowd-pleasing courtroom/family drama “The Judge,” arrived in theaters in October.
How did “The Judge” become the company’s opening pitch?
“Robert would always ask me -- harangue me, actually -- ‘What’s going to be the first Team Downey movie?’, and I was always saying, ‘Well, it’s going to be the first great script we get in,” Susan Downey said at a recent Envelope Screening Series presentation of “The Judge.”
“Which is not an answer, by the way,” her husband chimed in.
But she was just getting started. In this clip from the evening, Susan explains the pressure-free process of developing “The Judge,” a two-year journey that culminated in the finished draft they turned in to Warner Bros.
For more clips from “The Judge” screening — in which the group discusses various approaches to rehearsing and the challenges involved in whittling the movie’s layered story down to size — check back here through the week.
Twitter: @glennwhipp
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