While James Marsh delivered the best documentary imaginable on the subject with Man on Wire, Robert Zemeckis is now set to provide a narrative take on the events with The Walk. Based on Philippe Petit’s book To Reach the Clouds, it follows Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the man who performed the illegal wire walk between the World Trade Center towers.
“You get a sense from the teaser of the visual scope and the spectacle,” producer Tom Rothman tells EW. “When it comes time to step on the wire—and take you where only one human being in history has gone, and no one will ever be again—[Zemeckis] does it in visual ways that abso-f*cking-lutely blow your mind. There are shots in the third act of this film that literally take your breath away.” Also starring James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Charlotte Le Bon, Clément Sibony and César Domboy, check out the teaser trailer below, which doesn’t reveal much but shows off this spectacle.
Twelve people have walked on the moon, but only one man has ever, or will ever, walk in the immense void between the World Trade Center towers. Guided by his real-life mentor, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), and aided by an unlikely band of international recruits, Petit and his gang overcome long odds, betrayals, dissension and countless close calls to conceive and execute their mad plan. Robert Zemeckis, the director of such marvels as Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Back to the Future, Polar Express and Flight, again uses cutting edge technology in the service of an emotional, character-driven story. With innovative photorealistic techniques and IMAX 3D wizardry, The Walk is true big-screen cinema, a chance for moviegoers to viscerally experience the feeling of reaching the clouds. The film is a love letter to Paris and New York City in the 1970s, but most of all, to the Towers of the World Trade Center.
The Walk opens on October 2nd, 2015.