\n\tAt 40, he\u2019s yet to be recognized despite acclaimed turns in \u201cGood Time,\u201d \u201cThe Lighthouse\u201d and \u201cThe Rover.\u201d This year, Pattinson has stacked the deck.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe evidence is all over the 2026 film year: indies, franchises and, in the middle of it all, shooting the next \u201cBatman\u201d movie with Matt Reeves.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-variety-2020\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of A24, Venice Film Festival<\/p>\n
\n\tIn Lance Oppenheim\u2019s \u201cPrimetime,\u201d which played in competition at Venice (earning a seven-minute standing ovation<\/a>) and opens Sept. 25 through A24, Pattinson has what looks like his clearest awards vehicle. Kristoffer Borgli\u2019s dark comedy \u201cThe Drama\u201d gave him another showcase opposite Zendaya back in the spring. Then came Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey<\/a>,\u201d which became one of the year\u2019s billion-dollar phenomena. And still to come, on Dec. 18, Denis Villeneuve\u2019s final installment, \u201cDune: Part Three,\u201d will give him a showier, villainous supporting turn as the shape-shifting Scytale.<\/p>\n \n\tFour movies, two possible categories and two very different campaigns to juggle. Nobody\u2019s asking anymore whether Pattinson belongs in the race. The question is how the studios \u2014 and Pattinson \u2014 choose to play it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPrimetime\u201d seems to be the obvious one.<\/p>\n \n\tOppenheim, a documentarian who also helmed the Telluride surprise documentary \u201cYou Can See Everything\u201d alongside Nathan Fielder, is making his narrative feature debut. His Hansen is a showman, the connective tissue of an anti-hero origin story \u00e0 la \u201cJoker\u201d with Joaquin Phoenix and \u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d with Christian Bale. The film isn\u2019t out to canonize him. Instead, it watches everything that made him larger than the premise of the show: the ratings, the crew, the wannabe actors playing decoys and the audience who gobbled it up at home.<\/p>\n \n\tPattinson doesn\u2019t ask anyone to root for Hansen, rather he asks them to sit with a man they\u2019ve known from television and watch him squirm.<\/p>\n \n\tWe\u2019ve seen a character get embraced like this before. Phoenix won lead actor for \u201cJoker,\u201d an ugly, uncomfortable character in a movie that split the room and still ran the table. \u201cPrimetime\u201d operates in a similar space: loud enough to start a fight, familiar enough as an American story to give voters a way in.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Pattinson isn\u2019t the only highlight.<\/p>\n \n\tSkyler Gisondo, best known for roles in shows like HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Righteous Gemstones\u201d and most recently as Jimmy Olsen in James Gunn\u2019s \u201cSuperman,\u201d is terrific as Dan Plumb, the hopeful actor hired to play the bait. In many ways, he\u2019s best in show. Also great alongside Gisondo is Emmy winner Merritt Wever (\u201cNurse Jackie\u201d), who gives the producer an edge as the operation\u2019s compromises pile up.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd then there\u2019s the real Hansen, who has been angling his way into the rollout with countless interviews and comments about the film. If nothing else, the movie now comes with a sideshow, and sideshows keep a title in the conversation. Look what Elon Musk did for \u201cThe Odyssey.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tUnfortunately, Pattinson is a prime target for a vote-splitting scenario.<\/p>\n \n\tHe\u2019s very good in Borgli\u2019s comedy \u201cThe Drama\u201d as a museum curator whose wedding quietly comes apart. In another year, it might have been the campaign. But it came out in April, and \u201cPrimetime\u201d is the more recent entrant in the lead race.<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s also the fact that the lead actor race is incredibly competitive, with his \u201cOdyssey\u201d co-star Matt Damon in the thick of it, along with Andrew Scott (\u201cElsinore\u201d), John Malkovich (\u201cWild Horse Nine\u201d) and, still to come, Tom Cruise (\u201cDigger\u201d) and perhaps even his \u201cDune: Part Three\u201d co-star Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet.<\/p>\n \n\tThe supporting race could be the leaner pathway.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9Universal\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n \n\tIn \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d Pattinson plays Antinous, ringleader of the suitors circling Penelope, and one piece of Nolan\u2019s huge ensemble behind Damon\u2019s Odysseus in what\u2019s turning into one of the year\u2019s biggest films. Best picture contenders of that size can float a supporting player, especially one the industry already respects. The question for Universal is whether the part is big enough, and sticky enough, to be worth the political capital. Could he split votes with his co-star John Leguizamo, or come along for the ride?<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDune: Part Three\u201d is the other option, and potentially the showier one. Scytale is a bigger swing, Villeneuve is in his corner and Warner Bros. has a prime December date and real money in the franchise. The first two \u201cDune\u201d films drew 15 Oscar nominations between them, so the Academy plainly takes the series seriously beyond the craft categories. But none of those nominations have been for acting.<\/p>\n \n\tEither one could carry a real supporting push. But one wonders, could Pattinson actually land more than one nom?<\/p>\n \n\tJamie Foxx pulled it off in 2004, winning lead actor for \u201cRay\u201d and landing a supporting nod for \u201cCollateral.\u201d Cate Blanchett did it in 2007, with a lead nomination for \u201cElizabeth: The Golden Age\u201d and a supporting nomination for \u201cI\u2019m Not There.\u201d The most recent was Scarlett Johansson in 2019, with \u201cMarriage Story\u201d and \u201cJojo Rabbit.\u201d In addition, when you have a year of multiple titles, the Academy looks for the \u201crepresentation\u201d-type of film like they did with Jessica Chastain (nominated for \u201cThe Help\u201d in a seven-film year) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (nominated for \u201cCharlie Wilson\u2019s War\u201d in supporting actor, with two lead acclaimed works in \u201cBefore the Devil Knows You\u2019re Dead\u201d and \u201cThe Savages\u201d).<\/p>\n \n\tAnd let\u2019s not forget, actors can now be double-nominated in the same category following an Academy rule update earlier this year.<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s no guarantee for any of this. \u201cPrimetime\u201d might play too harshly for a chunk of the Academy, while \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d and \u201cDune: Part Three\u201d could be technical players with other actors to be recognized.<\/p>\n \n\tNonetheless, Pattinson stopped having us ask the question if he was a great actor a while ago. What\u2019s left is for the Academy, and its four Pattinsons before them, to talk themselves into checking the right box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Robert Pattinsons are better than one, and that makes his upcoming Oscar run a bit more complicated.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,33357,206780,35588,22546,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-768074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-oscars","tag-primetime","tag-robert-pattinson","tag-the-odyssey","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n