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Four Robert Pattinsons are better than one, and that makes his upcoming Oscar run a bit more complicated.
In “Primetime,” Pattinson sits alone in a dim Florida room, reading a stranger’s chat logs aloud: “I will undress
you as you undress me.” He’s playing Chris Hansen, host of the hidden-camera series “To Catch a Predator,” the man who turned police stings into television events that battled for ratings against the likes of ABC’s “Lost.” It’s the most uncomfortable thing Pattinson has ever done on screen (yet). It could also be what finally gets him an Oscar nomination.
At 40, he’s yet to be recognized despite acclaimed turns in “Good Time,” “The Lighthouse” and “The Rover.” This year, Pattinson has stacked the deck.
The evidence is all over the 2026 film year: indies, franchises and, in the middle of it all, shooting the next “Batman” movie with Matt Reeves.
In Lance Oppenheim’s “Primetime,” which played in competition at Venice (earning a seven-minute standing ovation) and opens Sept. 25 through A24, Pattinson has what looks like his clearest awards vehicle. Kristoffer Borgli’s dark comedy “The Drama” gave him another showcase opposite Zendaya back in the spring. Then came Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” which became one of the year’s billion-dollar phenomena. And still to come, on Dec. 18, Denis Villeneuve’s final installment, “Dune: Part Three,” will give him a showier, villainous supporting turn as the shape-shifting Scytale.
Four movies, two possible categories and two very different campaigns to juggle. Nobody’s asking anymore whether Pattinson belongs in the race. The question is how the studios — and Pattinson — choose to play it.
“Primetime” seems to be the obvious one.
Oppenheim, a documentarian who also helmed the Telluride surprise documentary “You Can See Everything” alongside Nathan Fielder, is making his narrative feature debut. His Hansen is a showman, the connective tissue of an anti-hero origin story à la “Joker” with Joaquin Phoenix and “American Psycho” with Christian Bale. The film isn’t 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.
Pattinson doesn’t ask anyone to root for Hansen, rather he asks them to sit with a man they’ve known from television and watch him squirm.
We’ve seen a character get embraced like this before. Phoenix won lead actor for “Joker,” an ugly, uncomfortable character in a movie that split the room and still ran the table. “Primetime” operates in a similar space: loud enough to start a fight, familiar enough as an American story to give voters a way in.
And Pattinson isn’t the only highlight.
Skyler Gisondo, best known for roles in shows like HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones” and most recently as Jimmy Olsen in James Gunn’s “Superman,” is terrific as Dan Plumb, the hopeful actor hired to play the bait. In many ways, he’s best in show. Also great alongside Gisondo is Emmy winner Merritt Wever (“Nurse Jackie”), who gives the producer an edge as the operation’s compromises pile up.
And then there’s 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 “The Odyssey.”
Unfortunately, Pattinson is a prime target for a vote-splitting scenario.
He’s very good in Borgli’s comedy “The Drama” 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 “Primetime” is the more recent entrant in the lead race.
There’s also the fact that the lead actor race is incredibly competitive, with his “Odyssey” co-star Matt Damon in the thick of it, along with Andrew Scott (“Elsinore”), John Malkovich (“Wild Horse Nine”) and, still to come, Tom Cruise (“Digger”) and perhaps even his “Dune: Part Three” co-star Timothée Chalamet.
The supporting race could be the leaner pathway.
In “The Odyssey,” Pattinson plays Antinous, ringleader of the suitors circling Penelope, and one piece of Nolan’s huge ensemble behind Damon’s Odysseus in what’s turning into one of the year’s 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?
“Dune: Part Three” 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 “Dune” 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.
Either one could carry a real supporting push. But one wonders, could Pattinson actually land more than one nom?
Jamie Foxx pulled it off in 2004, winning lead actor for “Ray” and landing a supporting nod for “Collateral.” Cate Blanchett did it in 2007, with a lead nomination for “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and a supporting nomination for “I’m Not There.” The most recent was Scarlett Johansson in 2019, with “Marriage Story” and “Jojo Rabbit.” In addition, when you have a year of multiple titles, the Academy looks for the “representation”-type of film like they did with Jessica Chastain (nominated for “The Help” in a seven-film year) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (nominated for “Charlie Wilson’s War” in supporting actor, with two lead acclaimed works in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” and “The Savages”).
And let’s not forget, actors can now be double-nominated in the same category following an Academy rule update earlier this year.
That’s no guarantee for any of this. “Primetime” might play too harshly for a chunk of the Academy, while “The Odyssey” and “Dune: Part Three” could be technical players with other actors to be recognized.
Nonetheless, Pattinson stopped having us ask the question if he was a great actor a while ago. What’s left is for the Academy, and its four Pattinsons before them, to talk themselves into checking the right box.
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Variety Awards Circuit: Oscars
