POLLS: Robert Pattinson's Maps To The Stars US distribution handled by Focus World; Expected in 2015

POLLS: Robert Pattinson's Maps To The Stars US distribution handled by Focus World; Expected in 2015

Well I'm disgruntled. Maps To The Stars had a distribution swap from eOne to Focus World and it feels like US Rob fans and Julianne Moore got the shaft.



From Variety:

After winning the best actress award in Cannes for “Maps to the Stars,” Julianne Moore was considered a strong bet in this year’s Oscar race for her turn as a washed-up star in the David Cronenberg drama. But the overdue actress, who has been nominated for four Academy Awards without winning, could be sitting out of awards season.

In a deal that closed last week, Focus World picked up U.S. distribution rights to the Cronenberg drama from Canadian outfit Entertainment One (eOne), sources tell Variety exclusively. “Maps to the Stars” won’t premiere stateside until early 2015.

Focus World is the alternative distribution division of Focus Features, and it hasn’t been decided if the drama will be released on VOD, play in theaters domestically or some combination thereof. “Maps” could get an Oscar qualifying theatrical release at the end of 2014, so that it would at least be eligible for Academy Awards nominations, according to one individual with knowledge of the deal, but a movie with that kind of strategy can sometimes get lost in the slew of December contenders.

“Maps to the Stars” will screen this fall at the Toronto International and New York Film Festivals, which are traditionally launching pads for Oscar contenders. On Sept. 9, Moore is scheduled to appear at a cocktail event following a screening of the film at Toronto.

“Maps to the Stars” premiered at Cannes to mixed reviews, although Moore was singled out by critics as delivering one of the best performances of her career. The film is a dark deconstruction of celebrity culture and co-stars Mia Wasikowska, Olivia Williams, John Cusack and Robert Pattinson, who previously worked with Cronenberg on “Cosmopolis.” Bruce Wagner (“Wild Palms”) wrote the screenplay.

Co-financed by eOne and Prospero Pictures, “Maps to the Stars” was produced by Prospero’s Martin Katz, SBS Productions’ Saïd Ben Saïd and Michel Merkt. Sentient Entertainment’s Renee Tab and eOne’s Benedict Carver executive-produced the film.

EOne Films International handles worldwide rights to “Maps to the Stars,” and will directly distribute the film in Canada, the U.K., and Australia and New Zealand. The movie opens in Canada on Oct. 31, and will rollout to other regions of the world starting this year.

WME negotiated on behalf of eOne with Anjay Nagpal, SVP, and Gene Kang, VP of Business Affairs, representing Focus World.

Indiewire/Thompson On Hollywood also said this is bye bye to award season (excerpt):

Julianne Moore can kiss goodbye to any hopes she was nursing for an Oscar campaign for David Cronenberg's Cannes Best Actress winner "Maps to the Stars," which is set to play Toronto and New York festivals. Canadian distributor eOne was going to distribute the film stateside, but it has now sold U.S. rights not to Universal specialty distributor Focus Features--the arm that would handle an Oscar effort--but Focus World, their digital distribution arm, which plans an early 2015 release.

The entertaining satire of Hollywood boasts a strong cast including Cronenberg fave Rob Pattinson, who canoodles on screen with both an anxiety-ridden movie star (Moore) and the troubled daughter (Mia Wasikowska) of psychotherapist/coach to the stars (John Cusack) and his wife (Olivia Williams), who manages his son's career. Ordinarily you would expect this to have a strong theatrical release, but this kind of movie does well on VOD, with smaller marketing costs.

That's disappointing to say the least. I had hoped Julianne would get a push and we might ride that wave to OscarRob strutting his stuff in support. Oh well....
Onward and upward! Do you guys think we'll have some CannesRob4.0 next year? Where will Life and Queen of the Desert pop up?? Will Idol's Eye go for a run next fall??? How about we do some polling to see what we're all thinking.

NEW: Robert Pattinson talks about hearing Rey's voice, being excited for Idol's Eye, Childhood of a Leader and more!

NEW: Robert Pattinson talks about hearing Rey's voice, being excited for Idol's Eye, Childhood of a Leader and more!



TheBrisbaneTimes.com The Rover puts Robert Pattinson on road to redemption

The vampire is dead. Or at least by now he should be. With The Rover, the new film from Animal Kingdom director David Michod, Robert Pattinson has finally shaken off the Twilight tag that threatened to define him forever as an actor.

In The Rover, he has an accent from America's deep south, bad teeth and a strange emotional dependency on others. It’s a role that has attracted some very positive reviews: Variety critic Scott Foundas talked about ‘‘a career-redefining performance ... that reveals untold depths of sensitivity and feeling’’.

Pattinson is a relaxed interview subject. He has a hearty laugh, and the air of someone who hasn’t worked out all his lines in advance, but he’s also ready to explain and explore what interests him. He’s serious about his work, and keen to make movies with people he admires and respects.

He’s aware that he’s getting favourable reviews for The Rover. He’s happy about this, of course, he says, ‘‘because I really love the movie’’. But when it comes to his performance, he admits, ‘‘I always think of it as a work in progress, and it just gets frustrating, thinking about things you could fix.’’

At the same time, when he read the script, it was one of those rare occasions when he connected immediately with a role.‘‘Maybe because it was so loose - you could really do almost anything with the character. You could project anything onto it. But I don’t know, I could hear the voice in my head almost immediately, I could feel a walk ... and that’s only happened to me three or four times since I’ve started acting.’’


Michod plunges the audience swiftly into the world of the film, a near-future in which Australia has become a run-down, devastated, hand-to-mouth economy. There’s an almost documentary-like immediacy, as there’s virtually no explanation of how this collapse has happened. Early on, Pattinson’s character, Rey, is taken in hand by Pearce’s character, for reasons that gradually become clear. Yet there are many things about Rey that don’t get spelled out or remain ambiguous: this is another aspect of the film Pattinson appreciates.

He spent almost no time with Pearce before shooting started. ‘‘I guess because I’d auditioned a year before, and talked to David a lot. I already basically made my mind up how I wanted to play the character. I had to keep my mouth shut, figuring out what he wanted to do, it was kind of scary.’’ He wondered what would happen if Pearce’s interpretation was totally at odds with his vision of his own character. ‘‘It’s worked out great now,’’ but there were a couple of moments at the beginning, he says, when it felt as if they were in completely different films.

American actor Scoot McNairy plays Rey’s brother, from whom he has become separated. Pattinson’s a big fan of the chameleon-like actor whose recent films include Killing Them Softly, Monsters and 12 Years a Slave. ‘‘The funny thing about Scoot is you can never recognise him,’’ Pattinson says. "I was talking to him about Argo the other day, and I didn’t realise he was in it. Absolutely no idea.’’ He gives one of his heartiest laughs. ‘‘Our whole conversation, he thought I was joking.’’

He doesn’t mind telling stories against himself, and has a self-deprecating way of talking about certainties. ‘‘I don’t know if I’m necessarily any good at ‘sculpting a career’ or anything,’’ he says, ‘‘but I know what I want to do. I’m not very good at finding or getting massive movies.’’ It turns out that he’s talking about life after Twilight. What he means, he says, is that ‘‘I don’t get approached very much about superheroes and stuff.’’

He has, however, plenty of interesting projects under way or awaiting release. The Rover premiered at Cannes, and so did Maps to the Stars, a dark comedy about Hollywood directed by David Cronenberg. He’s also made Queen of the Desert, a biopic with Werner Herzog, about British traveller, writer and political figure Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman). He’s playing her ally T.E. Lawrence - inevitably inviting comparisons with Peter O’Toole.

He’s recently been working on Life, an intriguing double portrait of James Dean and Dennis Stock, the Life photographer who took a famous series of portraits of the actor just before he broke through as a star in East of Eden. Pattinson plays Stock, and people assume he was attracted to the part because it is a reflection on celebrity, but he says that’s not the case. ‘‘A lot of what I was interested in was nothing to do with James Dean, or fame, or anything like that.’’ What drew him to Stock, he says, is that the character is depicted as ‘‘a really bad dad. And you don’t really see that in young guy parts. He just doesn’t love his kid, or is incapable of it, and it kind of pains him.’’

The film is also about conflicting visions of creativity, he says. ‘‘It’s a little ego battle, and a lot of it is about professional jealousy, and who’s a better artist, who’s the subject and who’s the artist.’’ Life is directed by Anton Corbijn (Control) who was a photographer before he turned to movie making.

Pattinson says his own opinions on photography are ‘‘kind of weird’’. He’s not a fan of digital image-making, he says: he feels it’s too easy, that it doesn’t require the same level of artistry as analogue photography. And, of course, he adds, experiences with paparazzi haven’t helped him appreciate photographers. ‘‘I have a very negative attitude towards photographers in a lot of ways, so it’s interesting to play one.’’

In October, he starts work on Idol’s Eye, to be directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, making his Hollywood debut. Robert De Niro has just signed on. ‘‘I’m really, really excited about this one,’’ Pattinson says. It’s a true story about a group of thieves at moments of transition - from the changing face of technology in burglar alarms to the shifting realities for the Chicago Mafia.

He’s also starring in an independent post-World War I drama called The Childhood of a Leader due to shoot in September. It will be directed by actor Brady Corbet (Mysterious Skin, Funny Games), from a script he has co-written. ‘‘I’ve known Brady for 10 years, he’s great and the script is phenomenal.’’

Corbet has said he really appreciates the way Pattinson uses his celebrity to help ensure that films he admires get made. Pattinson laughs when I mention this. It’s a power he might as well use while he can, he suggests. ‘‘We’ll see how long it lasts.’’

The Rover is currently screening.

There's also a great interview from Indiewire under the cut!
Rob talks Pretty Girl Rock :)

Click HERE to read the rest

Evan Bird from Maps To The Stars compliments Robert Pattinson - "He's a really down to earth guy, but he's a huge star.

Evan Bird from Maps To The Stars compliments Robert Pattinson - "He's a really down to earth guy, but he's a huge star.

I loved this little mention from Evan Bird!



Excerpt from Indiewire:

Evan Bird: A lot of actors my age, they're doing it either to become famous or rich. It's not about that. It shouldn't be. When it is about that, you're not going to be successful. Most people that are succesful appreciate it for an artistic value. You need to enjoy it. You should have no other reason to do it. Of course you make good money, and that's because everyone loves movies. I mean look at Robert Pattinson. He's a really down to earth guy, but he's a huge star.

Huge star indeed.

'I Just Had This Weird Feeling That He Was The One I Wanted To See The Most' ~ David Michod Talks About Casting Robert Pattinson

David Michôd spoke about meeting Robert Pattinson and knowing he was THE ONE for The Rover to Indiewire.
He has so many great things to say about Rob in this interview.
Check out these excerpts from the interview.........

Having Robert Pattinson by your side no doubt increased the amount of flashes going off on the red carpet the other night.

Yeah, there were moments where I realized that none of them were actually pointing at me [laughs].

It does boast the lightest scene of Cannes, where Pattinson's character sings along to a Keri Hilson jam alone in a car.

You're the first person to bring that up! I kind of half expected it would be a thing. When I was doing press for "Animal Kingdom" every press person would ask me about "All Out of Love."

What went into selecting that song?

One of the things that was challenging for this movie was it was set in a period of the future, so it makes musical choices really kind of difficult. I'd imagine that maybe there's a sense that pop is still some kind of functioning genre, like the equivalent to classic rock. I wanted at that point in the movie to remind people that Rob's character is a lost kid, one who in different circumstances would have favored pop songs. I just wanted that moment in the film to be a strong reminder of the fact that he just wants to be a kid.

About his performance, he's a true revelation in "The Rover." What led you to cast him?

It was a meeting. I still haven't seen the "Twilight" films. I don't feel I need to. I had a meeting with him before I knew I was going to make "The Rover," and found him instantly beguiling.

Why did you meet with him if you weren't familiar with his work?

I'd seen nothing. It's that weird thing that happens after a movie you've made has gotten some attention — you go on a billion blind dates. And this was one of them. I didn't really know anything about him, but I really liked him. He was really smart, funny and open. He seemingly had great taste. He had a really interesting and eclectic knowledge of cinema. When it came time to cast for "The Rover," I just had this weird feeling that he was the one I wanted to see the most. Fortunately he really wanted to do the movie.

I mean I put him through the wringer. We worked for three of four hours during our camera test, but I felt I knew within the first few minutes that I found the guy for the character. The next few hours were just us exploring. He helped me find the character. 

Read David's FULL Interview over HERE where he talks lots more about The Rover

Jude Law Talks "Queen Of The Desert" To Indiewire

Jude Law Talks "Queen Of The Desert" To Indiewire



Indiewire spoke to Jude Law about upcoming projects and much like Naomi Watts when she spoke to Josh Horowitz , Jude mentioned that "Queen of the Desert" is on hold.

"As for projects that may or may not be happening, Law confirmed Naomi Watts' statement that Werner Herzog's Gertrude Bell biopic "Queen of the Desert" is now on hold and he will likely be no longer be available for it when it returns. "I don’t think that’s happening. I don’t think I can do that anymore," he admitted."

You can read Jude's full interview with Indiewire HERE 

We'll obviously keep you updated as and when there is any more news about "Queen of the Desert".

via QueenDesertFilm

Robert Pattinson's "Queen Of The Desert" & "Maps To The Stars" On Indiewires "50 Indie Films We Want To See In 2013"

Indiewire compiled a list of the 50 Indie Films that they are excited to see in 2013.
Robert Pattinson's "Queen Of The Desert" & "Maps To The Stars" both made it onto the list.

They think that "David & Rob's second collaboration in "Maps to the Stars" looks mighty appealing" & they say that "Herzog tends to bring out the maniacal side of his actors, which means "Queen of the Desert" could be a thrill ride in more ways than one"

Mighty appealing is an understatement and we are SO ready to go on that thrill ride, right?

Check out what they had to say about them below

"Map to the Stars"
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Rachel Weisz, Robert Pattinson
Distributor: None as of yet.
Release Date: Very likely to premiere in Cannes or Venice or Toronto, with a deal and release date to follow.
Why Might It Be a Must See: Whatever you think of Robert Pattison becoming David Cronenberg's newfound muse, their second collaboration in as many years looks mighty appealing. The long-delayed "Map to The Stars" also brings Cronenberg's other righthand man Viggo Mortensen along for the ride (as well as Rachel Weisz), and is said to be a complex Hollywood satire... It's also the first film the Canadian director has actually shot in America. [Peter Knegt]

"Queen of the Desert"
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Naomi Watts, Robert Pattinson, Jude Law
Distributor: N/A
Release date: Nothing yet.
Why Might It Be a Must See: Just because he was recently seen onscreen as the villain in "Jack Reacher" doesn't mean Herzog has sold out. Every since "Rescue Dawn," the kooky Bavarian filmmaker has entered a compelling new stage with the narrative side of his filmmaking career, delivering bizarre, discursive dramas (can anyone really explain "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?") with the same loony poetry that often spills out of Herzog's mouth (that iguana bit in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" was something else). Herzog's new movie looks like a consolidation of his life as an adventurous documentarian and oddball fiction work: The movie stars Watts as legendary explorer Gertrude Bell and Pattinson as "Lawrence of Arabia" author T.E. Lawrence. Herzog tends to bring out the maniacal side of his actors, which means this could be a thrill ride in more ways than one. [Eric Kohn]

Check out what other films made the list over on Indiewire