Robert Pattinson ... Who?

Robert Pattinson has finally found his leading lady for his next film. And no, it’s not the much-rumored Nicole Kidman.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Uma Thurman will star opposite Pattinson in “Bel Ami.” Based on the famous Guy de Maupassant short story, “Ami” follows young journalist George Duroy (Pattinson) who deviously jumped from the bed of one of Paris’ most influential women to another to make his way to the top. Thurman will play the wife of a friend of Duroy’s who assists him in is ascent and later becomes his wife.

Also joining the cast is Kristin Scott Thomas. The Oscar-nominee will play a socialite who falls for Duroy, but just can’t let go when he’s ready to move on.

Thurman will appear next as Medusa in 20th Century Fox’s “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”

Pattinson stars in this weekend’s expected blockbuster, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” and in next summer’s “Remember Me.”

“Bel Ami” is expected to begin shooting in Paris next year.

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UPDATE:

It is NOT true that Kidman will star opposite Pattinson. While she did consider the project, the film’s timing didn’t work out. Kidman’s rep told Gossip Cop that “Bel Ami” is “categorically not happening for her.”

From Screen Daily:

In an intriguing star pairing, Twilight sensation Robert Pattinson is teaming with Nicole Kidman to star in Bel Ami, the film of Guy De Maupassant’s erotically charged story of ambition, power and seduction. Multi-award winning UK theatre directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod are directing from a screenplay by Rachel Bennette.

London-based Protagonist has taken on international sales to the film.

Uberto Pasolini (The Full Monty) will produce, with Simon Fuller of 19 Entertainment acting as executive producer. The film will shoot in London and Budapest from February 2010.

Donnellan and Ormerod, whose Cheek By Jowl is widely regarded as one of the most influential theatre companies in the world, will make their feature debut with this story about a young man’s rise to the top of Parisian high society in the 1890s, via the beds of the city’s most glamorous and influential women.

In a world where politics and media jostle for influence, where sex is power and celebrity an obsession, the film has, say the producers, a contemporary relevance which should resonate with audiences worldwide.

Bel Ami is a Redwave Films production in association with 19 Entertainment, Protagonist Pictures and RaiCinema. RAI has Italian rights. All other territories will be sold by Protagonist, which has already commenced pre-sales on the film.

From a NZ Herald News article. Rob talks about the Twilight fans, playing “himself” in Remember Me, learning new skills for Unbound Captives and gaining weight for Bel Ami! I am SO excited to see him in these new roles.

He’s bigger than Ben-Hur at the moment, if you believe all the hype. Yet to come face-to-face with Robert Pattinson is to meet a serious artist, a multi-talented individual who could as easily have been a classical or funky musician as a movie star.

The Twilight juggernaut is propelling the 23-year-old British actor to the heights of mega stardom and, having previously only played minor roles, most notably as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, he is making the most of it.

The small independent movie, Remember Me, was able to go ahead as the result of his casting and Pattinson is now in Unbound Captives, a western set in 1859, where the world’s sexiest youngster gets to act alongside the “Sexiest Man Alive”, Hugh Jackman. (Kate:Less of the youngster please, Rob is all man!)

“The Twilight fans are so devoted, even fanatical, that I’m now able to do so many films,” Pattinson says. “The economy is just so bad at the moment. I don’t care if they think I’m right for the part or not. I can get their movie made, which is great.”

(More Robert Pattinson Goodness!)

Robert Pattinson recently talked about his upcoming projects …

“If everything goes as schedule, in January I’ll be filming Bel Ami in Paris for 3 months, after which I’ll start filming the fourth and last Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn.”

Summer is a scarce word for Pattinson. “I’m pretty much booked for the next two years. I’ve got one week at the end of the summer to see my friend, whom in the end, I’ll forget even exists. It’s crazy!”

Rob admits that he is nervous about what the future will bring them when “Twilight” comes to an end.

“It scares me a little,” he said. “When I go to meetings for other projects, the people I meet with only seem interested in the convergence of Edward Cullen and I.”

And with his growing fans, other projects would love to bring those fans along board. “It’s like, ‘If the role interests you and you can bring the public from Twilight, you’ve got it’. They’d let me play a woman I think.”

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According to the Lyon Plus, a French newspaper, Robert Pattinson will be in Paris for 3 months at the end of the summer to shoot his new movie - the adaptation of the novel Bel-Ami written by Maupassant.

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With all this talk of Robert Pattinson possibly starring in an adaptation of Bel-Ami [buy the book], I thought I’d dig up what the novel is about!

Guy Maupassant’s second novel, Bel-Ami (1885) is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Duroy, christened “Bel-Ami” by his female admirers) making it to the top in fin-de-sihcle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. It explores the dynamics of an urban society uncomfortably close to our own and is a devastating satire of the sleaziness of contemporary journalism.

Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his friends as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end.

Do you think Bel-Ami sounds like a good role for Rob?

A translation of this article!

Let’s say that today you were beginning eight weeks of vacations, what would you do?
Rob: I want to travel! I’m gonna try to look for jobs in different countries. I think I will be working in Paris for three months at the beginning of the next year.

For what project?
Rob: I don’t know if I can say it… fuck it. It’s an adaption of Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant. Now that I said it to you, I can telling it to everyone. Also I’m fed up of what people say to me “you only do the Twilight movies, you aren’t anything more than a shooting star”. I refuse! (Laughs).

The last thing that has come to me is that someone in the set has said that, literally, you stink, that you smell badly.
Rob: (laughs) Yes I read it too! The funny thing is that these always come from “anonymous sources”. I must smell really bad because the set is 25 kilometres away from my hotel and I haven’t even gone out of the room.

You also said that don’t want to have a girlfriend in such a stuffy environment. Have you found someone who has made you change the idea?
Rob: Oh, no (laughs). I remember, when I was doing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where I only had a small part, the whole world was commenting on my girlfriend of then. It’s very sressful for them. You have to become very reserved in the matter.

You lived through an authentic pursuit on the media with Camilla Belle.
Rob: Yes, but i’s different with her, she is my friend. It was really fun. The thing is: if she isn’t your girlfriend, it doesn’t matter; but if it is, it turns into a nightmare, the whole world wants to know what are you doing.

You said that immediately after the success of Twilight it turns out to be very difficult for you to have a normal life. What do you do with your free time?
Rob: in some way the work has turned into the best refuge. Though it sounds ridiculous, I read scripts. I feel a little frustrated for not having gone to the university, so I treat to educate myself. I have brought approximately 100 books with me to Vancouver, they are all spread around the hotel room.