Robert Downey Jr. is set to star in a new film about a scamming doctor, based on a podcast.
Directed by Richard Linklater, the film itself doesn’t actually have a title yet, but is set around the Man Of The People episode of the Reply All series.
Based on a true story, it tells the tale of John Brinkley, who made fame and fortune in the early 1920s by charging patients for a bizarre bogus surgery, using goat glands to cure impotence in men. That is, until he was finally exposed by another doctor.
Fascinating story on John Brinkley, populist con artist who exploited political potential of new telecom technology https://t.co/aA1Vjmx3l1
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) January 29, 2017
The episode, which is number 86 in the Gimlet series of chilling stories about what can happen when technology goes wrong, aired last month.Annapurna Pictures announced on Monday that it will produce the film alongside Downey Jr’s own label Team Downey.Robert, who is currently busy with Iron Man duties as he works on this years Spider-Man: Homecoming and next year’s Avengers: Infinity War, previously starred in Linklater’s animation A Scanner Darkly.
