Indio Downey has landed his first lead movie role, joining the indie film Love In Vein as Damien, the central character in Will De Los Santos’s adaptation of Ryan Leone’s novel Wasting Talent. The casting gives the 33-year-old his clearest step yet from brief supporting parts into a lead turn built around drugs, relationships, music and survival.
The timing is what makes the news land now. Principal photography is scheduled for LA in March and April 2027, which puts the project on a defined track and leaves the production moving through its remaining casting in the months ahead. Jeffrey Gliwa is financing the film through Blue Shark Pictures, while Chris Hanley is producing alongside Orson Oblowitz, Tricia van Klaveren and Ben D. Wallace.
De Los Santos, who wrote and directed the film, has said he wants to honor Leone’s voice and the rawness of the book without softening its edges. That matters because the role places Downey inside material shaped by addiction and self-destruction, even as his own family name is tied to a different kind of recovery story. Robert Downey Jr. battled addiction issues in the 1990s and later overcame them, a history that gives the casting an added layer of scrutiny beyond the usual lead-role debut.
Downey, the eldest of Robert Downey Jr.’s three children, has appeared in fleeting parts in a handful of movies, including Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but Love In Vein is the first time he will carry a feature. Hanley said he was thrilled to be making another film with a Downey, calling the project a full-circle moment after Two Girls and a Guy, which he produced with Robert years ago, and said Indio brings the vulnerability and authenticity the role needs.
That leaves the film with a clear next stage: finishing the cast before cameras roll in LA in March and April 2027. If Love In Vein stays on schedule, the real test will not be the family connection or the title on the poster, but whether Downey can make Damien feel like more than a name attached to a famous last one.
