A few months ago we reported that Robert Downey Jr. was planning to produce and star in Yucatan. However what made it more interesting than the usual casting news is that it’s a a heist movie originally conceived by legendary actor Steve McQueen, but which never even got close to making it to the screen when he was alive.
Warner Brothers tried for several years to craft a film from the 1,700 pages of notes and storyboards that were found in a trunk long after McQueen’s death, but they failed to get it to work (at one point McG was attached to direct). Now Downey Jr and his wife (who’s also his partner in the new production company, Team Downey) are starting from scratch, going back to the original materials to try and turn the idea into a workable script.
It’s seems an uphill battle, but Deadline reports that Downey Jr. has found the writer who he thinks us up to the task, Anthony Peckham. The duo do have some history together, as Peckham was one of the people who worked on the script for Sherlock Holmes, and is now getting paid handsomely to have a crack as Yucatan. The film is about a renegade deep-sea salvage expert hired to steal a mysterious hidden treasure hidden deep underwater in the Mayan ruins of Yucatan. Sounds quite cool, but very technically demanding, which may be why McQueen never got past having endless pages of notes in a box.