Robert Downey Jr. to make Broadway debut in this fall’s ‘McNeal’

Fresh from his everything-winning run for Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. is headed to Broadway. 

Downey will produce and make his Broadway debut in McNeal, a new drama from Pulitzer winner Ayad Akhtar that will be helmed by Lincoln Center Theater resident director Bartlett Sher, the Tony winner whose 2018 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird became the bestselling American play in Broadway history.

Downey will play Jacob McNeal, “a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature,” according to the announcement. “But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence.”

Lincoln Center calls Akhtar’s new play “a startling and wickedly smart examination of the inescapable humanity – and increasing inhumanity – of the stories we tell.”

Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

The play will be staged at the Vivian Beaumont Theater starting September 5, officially opening September 30 for a strictly limited engagement through November 24.

The venue isn’t technically located in the city’s Theater District, but is considered to be part of Broadway.