Dolittle star Robert Downey Jr. has reflected candidly on the movie's notorious failure. Dolittle, which was a big-budget adaptation of the Hugh Lofting children's book The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, was meant to kickstart the star's next big franchise after leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The 2020 blockbuster bombed at the box office with a $250 million worldwide total, earned a dismal 15% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for six Razzie awards that year, winning one.

Robert Downey Jr. recently sat down with The New York Times Magazine for a profile in honor of the star being part of the Oppenheimer cast. During their conversation, he reflected on Dolittle, which he called a "two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity." However, he said the failure of the movie helped set him on the right track (and find new business advisors) after he was considered "bulletproof" coming out of the MCU. Read his full quote below:

I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in Dolittle. I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies.

The second most important film [I've done in the last 25 years] was Dolittle, because Dolittle was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity. After that point — what's that phrase? Never let a good crisis go to waste. We had this reset of priorities and made some changes in who our closest business advisers were.

Has Robert Downey Jr. Learned His Lesson from Dolittle?

This shifting of priorities for Robert Downey Jr. came at a tough time for the industry. More or less immediately after Dolittle bombed out of theaters, the industry shut down worldwide during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. These factors seem to have combined and resulted in Downey Jr. being absent from movie screens for three years, with the Oppenheimer release on July 21 marking his first movie to premiere since Dolittle.

In the meantime, it has become clear that Downey Jr.'s priorities have shifted away from recreating the success of the MCU in a different franchise. So far, the projects that he has been attached to have been varied and seemingly designed to show off his range as a performer. Considering the fact that one of those projects was the since-delayed third Sherlock Holmes sequel, he is not entirely shying away from franchises during this process.

However, his upcoming projects also include Oppenheimer, the Adam McKay political comedy Average Height, Average Build, Shane Black's Play Dirty, and a miniseries adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer. As these projects arrive on the big and small screen, Downey Jr. will be able to guide the eye of the public back toward his skills as an actor rather than the failure of his most recent tentpole. This is a very different outcome from what might have happened if Dolittle had been a success and spawned sequels, so it seems he took the lesson of that movie's failure to heart.

Source: The New York Times Magazine