Black Mirror movie: Robert Downey Jr’s film adaptation would be a thriller, says Charlie Brooker

(Channel 4)

Black Mirror’s season 1 episode, ‘The Entire History of You’, was one of its finest, a stinging exploration of how relationships would fall apart if we were able to dredge up every single one of our memories, conversations and arguments.

It came as exciting news in 2013 then, when it was revealed that Robert Downey Jr. had won a bidding war for the film rights to the episode.

Three years later, however, and we haven’t heard a peep about the project, not even whether RDJ plans to star or just produce.

Asked about the long-gestating adaptation at a London Film Festival Black Mirror panel this week, co-creator Charlie Brooker said he didn’t know if the film version is still in development, but that it would be in a different genre to the original.

"Originally, Jesse's [Armstrong, episode writer and Peep Show co-creator] idea using that technology was much more of a conspiracy thriller type thing," he told an audience. "It was something he wanted to do as a movie.

"So he said at the start, 'I still want to develop this idea as a movie', and we were like, 'We can't do that [story] - that's too complicated anyway, but can we do a domestic story using the same kind of idea?'"

Downey Jr. would be under no obligation to use Armstrong’s original idea of course, but it might be a good way to make the film function as a slightly more mainstream sci-fi thriller.

Black Mirror returns for six brand new episodes on 21 October through Netflix. You can read our spoiler-free review of one of them here.