Since his days as part of the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson has frequently made some fascinating and fantastic career choices – often taking on off-beat projects and collaborating with brilliant filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Josh and Bennie Safdie, Robert Eggers, James Gray, Christopher Nolan, Matt Reeves, and Bong Joon-Ho. At this point, his involvement in any movie makes said movie particularly intriguing – and today, he has raised eyebrows with the reveal that he is developing a remake of the cult horror film Possession with Smile writer/director Parker Finn.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the project has sparked a bidding war in the film industry that sees studios big and small competing to be involved (the trade specifically names A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros). Finn is set to both pen the script and direct the film, and while Pattinson is not yet signed on to star, he is producing the movie via his company, Icki Eneo Arlo. Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, whose horror credits span from The Ring and The Grudge to IT and Barbarian, is also on board as a producer.
The original Possession was released in 1981, written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, and it stars Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill. Mixing both psychological horror and supernatural terror, the film centers on a spy (Neill) who returns to his home in West Berlin and is welcomed by his wife (Adjani) with a request from a divorce – which then leads to all natures of spiraling madness. While not successful at first, Possession ultimately found an audience and has developed a cult following.
Parker Finn is presently less than two years removed from his breakout hit Smile, which was originally destined to be a streaming release before Paramount put it in theaters for spooky season and it became a massive box office hit. He opted to make a sequel, the upcoming Smile 2, as his sophomore feature, and one now wonders what the development of Possession might mean about a theoretical Smile 3… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Though Possession isn’t a film that is widely known and widely loved beyond cinephiles and horror afficionados, the people who do love it really love it a lot – and that’s going to put a special level of pressure on the project as it moves forward. The team-up of Robert Pattinson and Parker Finn is intriguing, and if the former does end up taking on the Sam Neill part in the remake, it will be exciting to see who the project casts to play the female lead opposite him.
Beyond Possession, Pattinson’s upcoming slate of films includes the next two installments of Matt Reeves’ The Batman trilogy and Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 – which debuted excellent first look footage a few months ago at CinemaCon and is slated for release on January 31, 2025. As for Smile 2, the upcoming horror film will be in theaters on October 18.