‘The Walk’ Trailer: Daring Joseph Gordon-Levitt Acrobatics in 3D

If you’ve seen James Marsh’s Academy Award-winning documentary ‘Man on Wire,’ you’re familiar with the story of Philippe Petit, the high-wire walker who performed the insanely dangerous feat of traveling, via tightrope, between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. If you haven’t seen ‘Man on Wire,’ you’ll have a new opportunity to learn Petit’s story when ‘The Walk,’ Robert Zemeckis’ fictionalized version of Petit’s book ‘To Reach the Clouds,’ opens next fall.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Petit (hope his French accent is better than that wig), who assembles a team to help him sneak into the Twin Towers and walk between them. Zemeckis’ film will obviously rely heavily on CGI, which would seemingly take away the lot of the drama of watching a human being perform something that should be impossible. On the other hand, the movie will be in 3D (and IMAX 3D), and that actually sounds like an ideal format for this story; the feeling of depth and height particularly on the oversized IMAX screen should be unusually visceral. I don’t know that I’d run to see ‘The Walk,’ but I’d probably, y’know, walk at a pretty steady clip to check it out. It opens in theaters October 2, 2015.