At this year’s CinemaCon, Robert Pattinson captivated the audience as he introduced them to his dual roles in Bong Joon Ho’s latest sci-fi thriller, ‘Mickey 17’.
The film, based on Edward Ashton’s novel ‘Mickey 7’, explores the lives of space colonists deemed expendable, who are repeatedly resurrected through advanced human printing technology to perform dangerous tasks. Pattinson’s character, Mickey Barnes, dies and is regenerated multiple times, with the film focusing on his seventeenth and eighteenth iterations.
Director Bong Joon Ho, known for his Oscar-winning film ‘Parasite’, described ‘Mickey 17’ as a blend of science fiction and profound human drama, centered around “a simple man who ultimately ends up saving the world.” The film’s trailer, unveiled at CinemaCon, highlighted this unique premise of a man facing death repeatedly in a bid to save his colony.
The novel portrays Mickey as a repeatedly expendable colonist, with the movie version increasing his deaths significantly for dramatic effect. “The number is the number of times he dies. I killed him ten times more,” Bong humorously remarked, indicating a shift from the source material’s seven resurrections to seventeen in the film.
The project has generated significant interest as Bong’s first major work following ‘Parasite’. However, post-production delays have pushed the release date to January 31, 2025, sparking speculation about its absence from the upcoming awards season despite its high-profile cast, which includes Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun, Naomie Ackie, and Toni Collette.
Pattinson praised the script as one of the most “funny and bizarre” sci-fi scripts he has ever encountered. He differentiates his portrayals of Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, describing the former as weary yet collaborative, and the latter as a more sinister “evil brother,” adding layers to the narrative’s exploration of identity and survival.
