Robert Downey Jr.'s company developing presidential debate drama

Robert Downey Jr. has always had a way with words, and now his production company is developing a film about a presidential race that comes down to three key debates.

Team Downey, which the Iron Man star runs with his producer wife Susan Downey (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang), is joining forces again with screenwriter Bill Dubuque, who penned the production company’s first movie, last year’s father-son drama The Judge, sources confirm to EW. That movie, which starred Downey as a defense attorney representing his estranged father, Robert Duvall, earned Duvall a supporting-actor Oscar nomination.

The new project will center on a presidential race that turns on three televised debates, and no actors or filmmaker have been hired yet, according to Variety, which first reported the story.

Team Downey has had several films inching forward in development, including an adaptation of the TV courtroom drama Perry Mason, and a drama about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II. More recently, Downey confirmed to EW that There Will Be Blood filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is writing a script for a retelling of Pinocchio that would star the actor as the toymaker Geppetto.

Susan Downey has previously said Team Downey aims to do intimate storytelling that plays well in the multiplex, but isn’t fueled by special effects. “Our storytelling is character-driven but on a commercial level,” she told EW. “We wanted to do something outside the big movie tentpole projects.”

Dubuque, a former human-resources executive, switched from headhunting to screenwriting with a spec script about his former profession that won him the attention of the Downeys. His next screenplay, The Accountant, about a bookkeeper trying to safeguard the money of illegal clients, stars Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, and J.K. Simmons. It’s set for release in January.