Rob spoke to USA today about his next project and said Mission: Blacklist is the one he will shoot first:
"I have five things going — actually six," he says. "I'm pretty sure I know which one is going to be first."
That would be Mission: Blacklist (2013), based on the true story of the interrogator credited with locating Saddam Hussein after the fall of his regime. After that, Pattinson will head to Australia with Guy Pearce to shootThe Rover, a thriller set in the post-apocalyptic future. It will be directed by David Michod (who wrote and directed 2010's critically acclaimed Aussie film Animal Kingdom).
UPDATE: Rob mentions filming in Iraq again to Metro:
Your next movie will be with Cronenberg then?
I don't know when exactly we're going to shoot. It will be David's first movie in America. In Los Angeles, to be exact. It will be about the industry of cinematography and I promise that it's going to be really weird. Till then, I'm doing Mission: Blacklist with the French director, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, who did Johnny Mad Dog. It'll be about the search of Saddam Hussein and we want to film in Iraq, in Tikrit, even tho it's complicated. But I'm 26 and it's the kind of thing that tempts me. If someone should do it, it will be me!
You can read the whole interview here and the translation here.
Here's the part about Mission: Blacklist in Les InRockuptibles:
No doubt. It's like those big American filmmakers who have an audience only or mostly in France: Coppola, Ferrera ...
RP: I did an audition for Ferrera one day but I didn't get the role. It was before Twilight. I felt like I accomplished my best performance, I almost broke my arm and he said: 'yeah, okay, not bad.' I left in tears, it was really embarrassing *laughs*! I want to be able to speak French so badly. A lot of things I want to are in French.
Oh really? Like what?
RP: I have a project with Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, who directed Johnny Mad Dog. It's called Mission: Blacklist, a movie about the search and capture of Saddam Hussein. And you know what? He wants to film in Iraq. Fuck yeah! Nobody else would have the balls to do that! Everyone wants him to go to Tunisia but he insists: it's happening in Iraq, I'm filming in Iraq. He's right! At least, as long as we don't get kidnapped *laughs*.
You can see the scans and read the whole interview translated here.
Eric Maddox was interviewed again on Pundit Review Radio for the show's 8th anniversary. He talks about the movie, about Robert Pattinson and his love for our very own BellaSophia3530's name. Yes, we asked and she called the radio and talked live with the blue shirt interrogator himself. We can't thank her enough.
You can listen to the parts he talks about the movie below:
Maddox just returned from Afganistan. It's his 8th interrogation tour. And his daughter was born the day after he arrived! Congratulations :))
He said he had the final decision on casting and he approved Robert Pattinson. He said to the producers if they can have a guy like that attached to the movie it's wonderful.
Then BellaSophia was live and she thanked him about his service for our country. He said he loves her name (Maryann) because he has a daughter named Mary. She asked if he met Robert Pattinson. Here's his answer:
“For me, it was a no-brainer. I said absolutely! Whatever you did to
get that guy to be a part of this movie, I think it’s wonderful and I
fully support it. We’re talking about a guy who is super famous and
really popular. We met for 14 hours, and he focused exclusively on the
project, and wanted to get down to the nitty gritty of the project. His
entire focus was on the project. It wasn’t about him or his needs, and
from that, I realized that this is a guy who is dedicated to his work
and wanted to put in the hours. That’s what made me certain that they
have built the right team for this.”
From the Front Row Filmed Entertainment facebook page:
FR and KNCC acquire the MENA rights to "MISSION: BLACKLIST" starring Robert Pattinson who will play the role of Sgt Maddox.. The military mastermind behind Saddam Hussein's capture.
The Cannes Film Festival started today and Mission: Blacklist is
being sold to distributors by Embankment Films. The movie was announced only recently, but it's repeatedly mentioned by media
outlets and distributors. Check out some excerpts from the past week
below:
Shipper says that with the six majors making fewer and fewer non-tentpole titles, a fallow space exists for the indie sector.
"I think it's symptomatic of a broader trend, which bodes well for economy (both broader and indie film)," he adds. "There's a lot of private wealth looking for a home." Preferred Content is using Embankment at Cannes for sales of its recently announced military thriller "Mission: Blacklist," starring Robert Pattinson. Ross M. Dinerstein, managing partner of Preferred Content, is producing alongside Erik Jendresen and Kevin Waller.
Let the Games begin.
True-life American military tales are gunning for a real resurgence lately – what with Ben Affleck’s Argo,Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, and the Robert Pattinson-starring Mission: Blacklist– and it looks like that means we’re not safe from a 3D take on such projects. A morning press release out of the Cannes Film Festival (oh, and heads up, get ready for a metric ton of these in the coming days) reveals that Freedom Films and Paradox Entertainment have made a deal to produce the “epic action pic Thunder Run,” based on the book “Thunder Run – The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.”
Domestic distributors will have a wide variety of choices at Cannes this year, from completed films in competition, to packages that have begun production or are only at the script stage with loose commitments from filmmakers and stars. Most of the buyers I spoke to claim they are in no rush to bid up the joint, but the pace of buying usually depends on several variables.
(...)
Here are the titles most often mentioned by distributors:
(...) MISSION: BLACKLIST–Director, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. Cast, Robert Pattinson. A young man tries to trap Saddam Hussein.
We are planning more giveaways soon so JOIN THE MISSION - follow us on twitter @Blacklistmovie
--------------
The very lovely @Chrisska sent us a picture adoringly hugging the Mission: Blacklist book so it got us thinking...We want you to send us your picture with the book (yes, you can hug your kindle.) We'll randomly pick a winner when we reach 500 followers and a 2nd winner when we reach 1000 followers on twitter. The winners get either an Amazon or iTunes gift card with enough $$$ to see Rob's other movie, BEL AMI, on VOD. Sounds good?
JOIN THE MISSION: follow us at @Blacklistmovie and tweet us your pic.
I finished reading Mission: Black List #1 and want to share some thoughts and quotes about Eric Maddox. I tried not to spoil too much but it's unavoidable.
Embankment Films has a page about Mission: Blacklist on their website with information about the movie and this awesome banner. Take a "look":
We have a promotional poster too:
The movie is being sold in Cannes this year so we believe that is the reason for the promo page. We already knew from what Rob told Premiere.fr that the movie was in pre-production but now it's official.
Eric Maddox is the military interrogator that has been credited with masterminding the capture of Saddam Hussein. Sgt. Maddox authored the book "Mission Blacklist" about his experience in Iraq. He spoke to TEDxOKC about his idea that, in the future, wars could much quicker (thus more lives saved) with increased emphasis and training in the area of interrogation and intelligence gathering.
Hollywood.com lists 5 reasons why Robert Pattinson is perfect to play Eric Maddox on Mission: Blacklist. Here are some of them:
He's Versatile
First thing's first: Pattinson may come off as disaffected as his Twilight counterpart when he's strolling red carpets, but it's only because he's a serious actor looking to leave the celebrity status out of his work. Between the installments of the much-loved franchise, he's tackled biopics (the Salvador Dali film Little Ashes), realistic dramas (Remember Me) and period spectacles (Water for Elephants). We've only seen a sliver of what Pattinson is really capable of, but his willingness to explore a range of stories, themes and characters is proof that he's more than capable of getting down and dirty in a thriller.
He's Not the First Pretty Boy to Make the Jump to Thrillers
The road to legitimacy can be a tough one for actors who exploded on to the scene at an early age, but Pattinson is following the right course. Like Matt Damon, who dabbled in high drama with The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses before tackling the role of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity, Pattinson has established himself as someone with the chops to take on movies that seem "out of his range." The masses underestimated Damon when he made the jump because he was scrawny and brainy — not a typical action hunk. Pattinson's in the same boat, but that's why Hollywood's finest have personal trainers!
He's Ready for a Transformation
Speaking of physical makeovers, a role in an military-centric movie provides Pattinson with a much needed motivation to lose his recognizable look. If he's going to become Eric Maddox, he's going to have to look the part — and that means dropping his head of hair. And he'll do it — Pattinson may be reserved in real life, but he's never strayed away from adapting to a part. Diamond skin may be insane, but he did it because he had to. A shaved head and a few pounds of muscle may be a small detail, but it goes a long way for an actor looking to dispel preconceived notions. Pattinson should have no problem kicking his image into high gear.
Robert Pattinson spoke to Premiere about Mission: Blacklist and the director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.
Robert Pattinson, who may surprise more than one in three weeks when Cosmopolis will be presented at Cannes, is not visibly stopping there. In a shift to "adult" movies the Twilight star will continue with Mission: Blacklist, the new film by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, the 2008 director of the impressive Johnny Mad Dog.
A thriller based on the book by Eric Maddox, the military interrogator who was the brains of the operation that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. Erik Jendresen, writer of the series Band of Brothers, was responsible for adapting. Shooting is scheduled to begin in the fall.
"We are going to scout locations in Iraq soon"
"As director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire normally does not work with professional actors, I thought I had no hope of getting the part says Rob [to the journalist of Première].
But we met several times and we got on really well together. Sauvaire has found a very exciting way of filming this. It’s strange, as it is a war film, but it’s shown mainly though the military interrogations done by Maddox. Language and the barriers it may create play a very important part. The focus is mainly on the real-life story of this military interrogator, Eric Maddox, who will soon come with us in Iraq to do a series of location scoutings."
Rob goes on : The director, Sauvaire, is really an astonishing person. He’s got a gift for meeting people. He thus met and spent some time talking with the Iraqi Minister for Culture, quite by chance. He also bumped into a guy who was one of the former leaders of the Hussein clan and who had been very close to Saddam. I asked Sauvaire, ‘But how do you do it to get to know a guy like that ?’ and it turned out that Sauvaire had just bumped across the guy in a bar in Paris! . After Johnny Mad Dog, an ultra-violent film which immersed the viewer directly into the day to day life of African child-soldiers, and which was shot in Liberia, Sauvaire seems to have found an ideal theme for his explosive vision.
Johnny Mad Dog was an extremely strong film, which had all the value of a real documentary, while having a great cinematic quality , says Rob, enthusing over the film. I’m so eager to start working with Sauvaire on Mission: Blacklist. It’s going to be a f***ing great film.
In the days after Osama was found and killed by Navy SEALS, I began thinking about how we could cover this great news on Pundit Review Radio. I immediately thought of a former guest who has amazingly relevant experience. It was a true honor to welcome back to the show Eric Maddox, the man who masterminded the capture of none other than Saddam Hussein. Eric is a true blue American hero. When he got to Iraq in 2003, he had never interrogated a prisoner. Four months later, it was his interrogations that broke the hunt for Saddam wide open.
Click here to listen to two interviews with Maddox: one from 2009 and another from 2011 where he talks about the Mission: Blacklist adaptation process.
Mission: Black List #1 is the true story of Sergeant Maddox’s efforts to discover the hidden location of Saddam Hussein after the fall of his regime in 2003. Mission: Black List #1 is told from the point of view of its protagonist, Sergeant Maddox.
The Filmlot did an interview with Mission: Blacklist director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire about his movie Johnny Mad Dog and his career.
Making its US premier recently at Sundance, Jean-Stephane Sauvaire’s first narrative feature, Johnny Mad Dog, delivers a challenging and forceful view of Liberian child soldiers who are part of a rebellion to overthrow the government. Taking a break from the chill of Park City, we sat down with Jean to find out more about the equally chilling subject of his film, the rhythm of cinema, and how an intensely powerful and realistic film can be just as effective as a documentary in exposing important global issues.
What ignited your interest in filmmaking?
Maybe it was just the desire to tell stories you’ve never seen before – to tell stories that we don’t want to see – in this case, child soldiers. No one wants to show this reality because it’s brutal; it’s quite difficult to watch. I think cinema has to show the things that we don’t always want to see. I think [cinema] doesn’t only have to be entertainment, but can also show the world as it actually is. For me, cinema has the power to not only show the reality of the world, but can sometimes change it.
For example, we were trying to find a solution to help reintegrate these child soldiers… after the war. We screened this movie at the UN in New York. It was interesting for me because sometimes you screen it for movie people and sometimes it’s for political people. I really like that with cinema, you can do both. In this case, to screen the movie at the UN was important and necessary. I was really glad to do it because this movie can hopefully change the way they fight against the users of child soldiers, and create programs that try to reintegrate of these boys [into society].
Your first film, Carlitos Medellín, was a documentary about fighting kids in Colombia. But you originally wanted to make a feature film more like Johnny Mad Dog right?
Exactly.
So did you come across Emmanuel Dongala’s novel for Carlitos Medellín or after?
After in fact. I went to Colombia in 2003 and it was too dangerous to make the movie because they were in civil war. When I shot Johnny Mad Dog in Liberia, the war was over so it was possible to shoot, but in Colombia, they were fighting in the street. So I couldn’t really imagine doing a movie at the same time and getting the people I work with killed… [but] I really wanted to cover this situation in Santo Domingo Savio, so I decided to make a documentary. I just improvised…
When I came back to France I was quite disappointed, not to have made a feature film… Somebody told me about Emmanual Dongala’s novel Johnny Mad Dog and when I read the book I thought, “Ok this is great! It’s an amazing story and it’s really interesting to have the two point of views – one from the child soldiers and one from the girl during the last weeks of civil war in Africa.” My idea was to go to Liberia and to confront the reality of the book. Emmanuel is from the Congo… he knew all the events, and was one of the guys who suffered because of the war… so the book was quite realistic, but it was important for me to understand these boys’ reality…
It was in 2004, one year after the war, when I went there for the first time. I met these boys and told them, “I want to make a movie about child soldiers, so I need to hear about your experiences.” They told me, “If you want to do a movie about child soldiers, you have to do it here, in our country, with us. We are the ones who really know about this.” But at the time it was quite difficult because there was a transitional government running the country, we couldn’t get insurance to do the movie – so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to come and shoot my movie in Liberia.
It was also quite difficult to finance this kind of movie. It took time… [but] finally we shot this movie in January 2006. It was really the right time for Liberia because they had just elected a new president, a woman named Ellen Jhonson-Sirleaf, so it was a positive way to show the international community that a movie could be made in this country. It was also an opportunity for people to work as well as being a testimony of this war. So they really helped us… that was really important because you can’t do a movie like this in Liberia if the government doesn’t help you… For them it was also an important matter because it was the first movie ever shot in this country.
Did you ever feel the need for security during the production?
No, it wasn’t that dangerous. In the beginning the UN wasn’t really aware of this project… [but] doing a movie [like this] can be trouble, kids walking in the streets with weapons, we didn’t know what could happen. So they didn’t really help us in the beginning, but because the government was really pushing to do this movie, they didn’t want to go against them. We had to inform a lot of people – the whole population in the city – to tell them that the war was not coming again, but that it was a movie with fake weapons – and we would be shooting in the street – so don’t have to be afraid! We did a campaign like this with the government and the ministry of information… now when you go to Liberia, everybody knows aboutJohnny Mad Dog.
How was the production received? Even though you had the crew and the equipment all around, was the sound of gunfire an issue for the residents?
Well, we couldn’t use blank ammunition because of an embargo in Liberia – you can’t even import fake weapons. That was the main problem we had in the preparation. They told us, “There’s an embargo so you can’t import weapons, even for your movie.” So we thought, “How can we do a war movie without weapons?” Finally we found a solution… All the weapons in the movie are actually toys from Japan. They were quite similar to a real AK-47, they were quite heavy also, but they shot paintballs. It was even a bit difficult for the boys because they were used to the real weapons – they knew how to check the weapons and how to use them. But the guns didn’t make noise, so we could shoot in the street without the sound of gunfire scaring everybody.
By now, it seems fairly obvious that this year’s Cannes Film Festival will serve as a coming out party of sorts for Robert Pattinson, at least, a coming out party for the actor’s talents beyond just sucking blood and turning girls into emotion pancakes, as he’s been doing for years with his work inThe Twilight Saga. The actor’s performance in David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis looks better with every trailer released, and the film’s in-competition premiere at the festival should be a watershed moment for Pattinson. But Pattinson has now added another Cannes-centric project that will help establish him as an actor who is more than capable of breaking out of Edward Cullen’s coffin.
Pattinson has signed on to star in Jean-Stephane Sauvaire‘s (Johnny Mad Dog) Mission: Blacklist. The film’s script has been adapted from its source material, military interrogator Eric Maddox’s (written with Davin Seay) novel “Mission: Black List #1,” by Band of Brothers scribe Erik Jendresen. The book is described as “a psychological thriller that details the true, inside story of the search for Saddam Hussein and the interrogator, Eric Maddox, who spearheaded his capture.” The film will be sold at the Cannes Film Market by Embankment Films. A former Army Ranger and a highly decorated officer, Maddox is a tremendously interesting man with a ton of stories to tell. This is the sort of dude whose “I helped capture Saddam Hussein” story is but one tale in a very thick book, and his life and career should provide Pattinson’s meatiest role yet.
