Robert Downey Jr. has called his 2020 flop Dolittle one of the “most important” films he has made in the last 25 years.

During an interview with The New York Times, the Iron Man star admitted he “hastily” signed up for the family adventure after bowing out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

He thought he was “bulletproof” after starring in Marvel’s box office hits since 2008 but Dolittle was a major flop that made him re-evaluate his priorities.

“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,” he explained. “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.”

Calling Dolittle “a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity”, Downey Jr. shared that his wife, producer Susan Downey, suffered a “shocking” amount of stress trying to get the movie “serviceable enough to bring to market”.

He added, “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.”

After the flop with Dolittle, the Downeys turned to documentaries and released Sr., about the actor’s late father, in 2022 and the TV series, Downey’s Dream Cars, this year. The 58-year-old called the former project “the most important thing I will ever do”.

He also cited the 2006 family comedy The Shaggy Dog as the second most important film he’s made in the last 25 years because it was the movie that got Disney executives “saying they would insure” him after his battle with drug addiction stalled his career in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

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