How do you get an A-list actor to star in your movie? If it’s Robert Pattinson, the answer is a whole lot of nicotine.
The “Batman” and “Odyssey” star is generating Oscar buzz for his portrayal of “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen in A24’s “Primetime.” But Pattinson was originally planning to stay behind the camera, serving only as a producer.
That is until “Primetime” screenwriter Ajon Singh retooled the script to convince Pattinson to take the lead role, while director Lance Oppenheim thought of a brilliant bribe.
“Rob, at the time, was grappling with a Zyn addiction,” Oppenheim told Vulture, referring to the nicotine pouch brand. There was a Zyn shortage in the U.S. at the time, so Oppenheim recruited a friend in Canada to send 200 canisters to Pattinson’s home in Los Angeles. Then, Oppenheim dropped off the latest draft of “Primetime” with a letter that began, “Dear Chris Han-Zyn.”
Pattinson called the director after reading the new script and said he would take the role. Said Oppenheim, “It was like LeBron making the announcement that he was joining the Heat.”
“Primetime” opened on Sept. 25 and landed on the higher end of box office expectations, raking in nearly $50 million worldwide against a $15 million production budget. The film also caught the attention of Hansen himself, who has lashed out against the movie and Pattinson’s performance as a “complete work of fiction.” Hansen’s review was an anomaly; critics generally rallied behind the film, with Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman calling Pattinson a “new kind of movie star” with “nervy dyspeptic magnetism.” “He’s a star for the age of entropy,” Gleiberman wrote, “for an era when everything is falling apart.”