Yesterday marked the 40th Anniversary of Phillipe Petit’s August 7th, 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, which made it a good time for TriStar to announce that Robert Zemeckis’ film about the event – The Walk – has wrapped principal photography, and to release the first two pics (via USA Today), which you can see above and below.
The film, based on Petit’s book To Reach the Clouds, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young dreamer who dared the impossible: an illegal wire walk between the World Trade Center towers.
Here’s the synopsis from the official press release: ‘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.’
Also starring in the film are James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Charlotte Le Bon, Clément Sibony and César Domboy.
The film will be released on October 2, 2015.