Coming off what are arguably two of the best performances of his career in James Gray‘s “The Lost City Of Z” and the Safdies‘ “Good Time,” Robert Pattinson isn’t changing course. The actor is continuing to chase challenging roles with auteur directors, and his next sounds like it’s going to be another barn burner.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Pattinson was teaming up on an unnamed project with Antonio Campos, the filmmaker behind “Christine,” “Simon Killer,” and “Afterschool.” Now, Esquire has revealed the title of the film is “The Devil All The Time,” and it sounds like the actor is diving into a pretty steamy role.
“There’s this line in it — and sometimes that’s all you need. And it’s like, ‘Ooh… that’s scary to say’. Because it’ll go down in posterity and I’ll be the one saying it. You literally cannot get darker. It’s fucking dark. This character is an evangelical preacher in the South in the Fifties, but he’s gleefully bad and kind of funny and charismatic too. I know, it’s irresistible,” Pattinson explained.
He adds the character might be sexually repulsive and violent too, but that just adds to the appeal of the role. “…you know when actors say, ‘I refuse to play someone who does something bad.’ I’m, like, why? That’s fucking crazy. You can’t do anything bad in your real life. I think if someone needs to play a hero all the time, it’s probably because they’re doing really gross stuff in their real life.”
It all sounds like the film is an adaptation of the book by Donald Roy Pollock, which is set through the 1950s, and also features a preacher alongside a row of oddball characters, in what sounds like a dark and twisted tale. Here’s the book synopsis:
Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.
Production will reportedly start by the end of the year, and between this and Clare Denis‘ “High Life,” it looks like we have plenty to look forward to from Pattinson.
