Taron Egerton will replace Robert Pat­tin­son in Claire Denis’ next film

While the film world’s atten­tion cen­ters on the Croisette for the next cou­ple weeks of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, those direc­tors not in this year’s Offi­cial Selec­tion remain hard at work on their own projects. Let’s not allow the steady stream of new pre­mieres from the south of France to dis­tract us from the major rev­e­la­tion of the past few hours: Robert Pat­tin­son​’s sched­ule is shifting.

Screen Dai­ly has announced that the pre­em­i­nent movie star of his gen­er­a­tion has part­ed ways with The Stars at Noon, the upcom­ing film from Claire Denis fast approach­ing prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy. In order to keep with their planned shoot in Nicaragua this Octo­ber, they’ve already found a replace­ment in ris­ing tal­ent Taron Egerton.

The one-time Rock­et­man star will take over the role of a British exec­u­tive work­ing for an oil com­pa­ny pass­ing itself off as an NGO, in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca to cap­i­tal­ize on the impend­ing civ­il war between far-left San­din­istas and US-backed coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. He gets involved with a strug­gling female reporter and part-time sex work­er (that’s Mar­garet Qual­ley), but nei­ther can antic­i­pate the upheaval that this peri­od of polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence will vis­it upon them.

Stack­ing the Pat­tin­son and Egerton fil­mo­gra­phies against one anoth­er, it’s easy to see this change-up in per­son­nel as a down­grade. The man known as ​“RPattz” has col­lab­o­ra­tions with Cro­nen­berg, Her­zog, the Safdie broth­ers and James Gray under his belt; Egerton is best known for his appear­ances in the Kings­man fran­chise, and for lend­ing his tal­ents as croon­er to the series of Sing ani­mat­ed films.

Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, a film by Claire Denis is a film by Claire Denis. She’s shown adept­ness in unex­pect­ed cast­ing before, so who’s to say she won’t bring out some hereto­fore unseen bril­liance from Egerton – her next Vin­cent Gal­lo, perhaps.