Even though he won't be walking the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival until tomorrow (#shakingandcrying), Robert Pattinson has been busy stacking up projects over the past few weeks. The little vampire that could has lined up the Saddam Hussein hunting drama "Mission: Blacklist," joined "Animal Kingdom" director David Michod's "The Rover" and plans to reunited with his "Cosmopolis" helmer David Cronenberg for an unspecified future project. And it appears, that's not all.
The same article in which he chatted with Les InRockuptibles (via RPLife) about his forthcoming Cronenberg pic, Pattinson also dropped this little bit of info: "I'm going to do a movie about The Band, the one that played with [Bob] Dylan. [It's] a beautiful script about the nature of songwriting." Man, where does one begin describing The Band to the Twihard generation….
The legendary group was founded by Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson, all names that on their own already stand pretty tall in the rock 'n roll canon, but who came together to form The Band. The group found an ally in frequent collaborator Bob Dylan, dropped one of the greatest and most influential records of all time with Music From Big Pink and had their farewell concert in their original lineup shot by Martin Scorsese, putting together one of the greatest rock docs of all time "The Last Waltz." Even if the name is a mystery to you, the music you've undoubtedly heard, with "The Weight," "I Shall Be Released" and "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" among their most well-known tunes. And while they reformed with different members in the '80s and '90s, they never wound up matching their creative and commercial peak of their earlier years.
Anyway, long story short, not much else is known about the project. We presume if Pattinson is taking a role, he'll be playing one of the central figures — maybe Levon Helm or Robbie Robertson — and certainly the actor and part-time musician will have a chance to show off his chops. So add it to the slate. We gotta say, we admire the diversity of material Pattinson has been putting together, so hopefully the projects and the actor will live up to the potential.