How Robert Pattinson’s role in Twilight is helping him play The Batman

Robert Pattinson has admitted his four-movie run as Edward Cullen in Stephanie Myer’s Twilight franchise has been hugely influential in preparing him to play the caped-crusader, The Batman, in DC’s next reboot of the popular superhero.

Pattinson, 34, has never looked back too fondly on his time as sparkling vampire Edward Cullen in Twilight. He dubbed the fandom “scary” and revealed in a now-infamous 2011 interview he spent a long time “mindlessly hating it.”

All that may have changed, however, as he prepares to play The Batman.

DC’s super-detective is one of the world’s most popular heroes. After a dozen live-action appearances in both film and television, a host of animated movies, and of course thousands of comic issues, everyone knows the name ‘Batman.’

There’s a certain pressure that comes with following in the footsteps of famed Batman stars like Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, Adam West, and Ben Affleck.

For Robert Pattinson though, it’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. Twilight prepared him “totally” for a rabid fan base. In fact, he welcomes the huge Batman pressure.

“There’s a slightly different feeling when you know loads and loads of people are going to watch something you’re working on,” he told Total Film Magazine.

He continued, admitting he wouldn’t be in filmmaking if he didn’t want to push himself at the highest levels: “I weirdly enjoyed it during Twilight… the idea that you can mess it up. I guess I felt pretty confident. I wanted to be on the big stage.”

“Messing up” seems to be a theme of the new Batman flick too. The reboot joins Bruce Wayne in just his second year under the cowl. It’s “not an origin story,” Pattinson promised. We do get to meet Wayne “in the early days” of his crime-fighting career though.

“What’s really important about this iteration, for me, is that you know a lot of the other stories are about how he had to master his fear and master himself in order to become Batman… in that Batman state, the character is sort of his best self.”

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“I hope what’s different about what we’re doing is try and do it in exactly that sort of manner. And then, of course, the other things that are from the earlier history of the context of him being the world’s greatest detective and how we got there.”

Pattinson has reportedly signed on for a single Batman film. He is in line to make just shy of $5 million for his first outing in the iconic black cowl.

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If The Batman has smash-hit success like Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, however, the British star may be tabled a similar $50m follow-up offer to shoot multiple sequels. The two rivals could eventually meet too, producer Bradley Cooper has teased.

The Batman will be released in October 2021, as long as there are no further delays. Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, and John Turturro will all appear in the new Batman movie alongside Pattinson.