Robert Downey Jr to play The Vampire Lestat?

By Matt Holmes /

How much of Robert Downey Jr playing Robert Downey Jr can we take - even if it's gimmicked up into early 20th century sleuths, or centuries old vampires? I'm not too keen of what he seems to have done with the now highly sexed up James Bond style Sherlock Holmes and I just wonder if he's getting too many franchises and alpha-male roles thrown his way at the moment. Too many opportunities to show off. Become a parody of himself. I know the Robert Downey Jr from The Soloist isn't all that marketable but this new version is becoming over-saturised right now. Bloody Disgusting ran the exclusive and they say 100% confirmed story that the Iron Man himself is in talks to play The Vampire Lestat in a reboot of Anne Rice's "years before Twilight vampire romance novels" at Universal. Previously Stuart Townsend (in The Queen of the Damned) and Tom Cruise (in what one of his most impressive performances in Interview with the Vampire) played the part, the latter being a very high-profile movie and one they would be wise not to remake, even if it is the first novel in the Lestat series. My advice would be find a way to adapt the other Rice novels into an origin movie, and leave that one well alone.