To have looked up, on the morning of Wednesday, August 7, 1974, in Lower Manhattan, would have been to witness one of the most expertly crafted physical accomplishments of the 20th century. It was the day that French tightrope artist Philippe Petit walked on a 200-foot-long wire between the Twin Towers—without a net, without a safety harness, without anything to guarantee his survival. With thousands of onlookers cheering him on from below, and police officers threatening his arrest up above, Petit spent 45 minutes passing (and performing) between the city’s iconic buildings, completing “the walk” successfully. (He was charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing. The charges were dropped by the D.A. when Petit agreed to do a free aerial show for children in New York City’s Central Park.)

Three decades later, Petit wrote a memoir (To Reach the Clouds), and in 2008, James Marsh’s documentary (Man on Wire) was released (it took home the Oscar for best documentary), chronicling the preparation and the scheming of the entourage that ensured Petit would succeed in a most ambitious and treacherous—not to mention illegal—feat.

Now the feature film—The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the daredevil himself—will be out this fall in time for Oscar season. It will be the second film released under Tom Rothman’s newly revived TriStar Pictures, and a spectacle to boot: revered director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away) shot the film in live-action 3-D, which will amplify not only the viewers’ experience but also their proximity to the walk itself.

Zemeckis shot in Montreal last summer and brought on board Ben Kingsley (as Petit’s longtime mentor, Papa Rudy), French-Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon (as Annie, Petit’s then girlfriend), and a slew of young up-and-comers-—including Ben Schwartz, James Badge Dale, and Clément Sibony—to round out his team. “The thing that neither the book nor the documentary could do was actually put the audience up on the wire with Philippe,” said Zemeckis. “We did. And that is what movies are all about.”