David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis has just guaranteed the unlikely occurrence of teenaged girls attempting to sneak into a David Cronenberg/Don DeLillo movie by signing up Robert Pattinson as the film’s lead. Pattinson—ever-mindful that his career not go the way of, say, Jason Patric's by carefully choosing his post-Twilight projects—reportedly gravitated toward the film because he is “a big fan of Cronenberg's work and an admirer of DeLillo's books,” so there’s that.
Pattinson replaces previously named star Colin Farrell (who’s a bit rough around the edges to play a 28-year-old “financial wunderkind” anyway) as Eric Packer, whose Ulysses-like journey across a Manhattan traffic jam to get a haircut is beset by various disasters, encounters with oversexed women and “pastry assassins,” and gambles that could lead to his personal ruin. The also previously announced Paul Giamatti and Marion Cotillard (as Packer’s wife) are still expected to co-star, so there’s no explanation yet for why Cronenberg decided he liked Pattinson more than Farrell. Unless he himself is actually a teenaged girl, who maybe thinks Farrell is all icky now. But it must be said that Cronenberg will likely do marvelous things with Pattinson's natural ghostly pallor.