If you’re a regular reader of The Playlist, then the odds are that you’re well aware of Robert Pattinson’s post-‘Twlight’ work. After he stopped playing a sparkly vampire, Pattinson went on to star in films such as “The Rover,” “Maps to the Stars,” “The Lost City of Z,” “Good Time,” and, most recently, “High Life.” These are films that “cinephiles” will seek out, but apparently, no one else cares about. And that’s what has forced the actor’s new films to be a Christopher Nolan blockbuster (“Tenet”) and a superhero film (“The Batman”).
Speaking to GQ, the actor opened up about why he chose now to venture back into the world of blockbusters, after leaving them behind nearly a decade ago. And no, it’s not for some sort of artistic challenge. It’s survival.
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“I started the beginning of last year with no job,” Pattinson said. “And I was calling my agent and just being like—I had gotten good reviews in stuff—and I was like, ‘What the fuck? I thought this was a pretty good year, and I’m fucking starting the year like I’ve just done a pile of trash.’”
The actor added that his agent told him that big studio film directors weren’t reaching out because “everyone thinks you don’t want to do any of this stuff.”
And apparently, Pattinson was interested in doing blockbusters. But not for the reasons you may think. It wasn’t because the actor desperately wanted to play Batman in a superhero film. He didn’t necessarily desire to star in a Christopher Nolan event movie. All Pattinson wants to achieve by dipping his toes into blockbusters is to have security and “commercial viability.”
“Just something which you could kind of rely on a little bit more,” Pattinson explained. “The problem which I was finding was, however much I loved the movies I was doing, no one sees them. And so it’s kind of this frightening thing, ’cause I don’t know how viable this is for a career.… I don’t know how many people there actually are in the industry who are willing to back you without any commercial viability whatsoever.”
Well, with “Tenet” expected to be one of the biggest films of 2020 and “The Batman” projected to do incredibly well in 2021, Pattinson will be very much a commercially viable A-lister for years to come. We’ll just have to see if he uses that clout to go back to indie films or if he’ll stick around and do blockbusters a bit longer.
“Tenet” is expected to arrive in theaters on July 17. Maybe.