Robert Pattinson Says Bong Joon Ho Is an ‘Unusual’ Director: ‘Mickey 17’ Felt ‘So Impossible’ to Make at the Start

Robert Pattinson isn’t shying away from detailing just how different of an experience it was to work with director Bong Joon Ho.

Pattinson, who leads Bong’s oft-delayed “Mickey 17,” told The New York Times Style magazine that the filmmaker has a unique directing process. “Mickey 17” is Bong’s first film since his history-making Best Picture winner “Parasite,” which was released in 2019.

“He’s an unusual guy,” Pattinson said. For instance, Pattinson described to the Times that Bong would shoot the last line to a scene and then make script changes on the fly.

“Everyone on set was like, ‘What is happening?’” Pattinson said. “The movies you like most are the ones that feel so impossible at the beginning. It’s such a leap of faith — just sticking the landing is cool.”

To play Mickey, one of numerous “expendables” who are created just to perform dangerous jobs where they’ll almost certainly be killed, Pattinson considered embodying an unlikely character who also endures a lot of comic pain and abuse: Lloyd Christmas in “Dumb and Dumber.”

“Oh, I want to do a Jim Carrey thing,” Pattinson recalled thinking at the time, explaining it’s “an incredibly tight rope to walk” between comedy and drama. Pattinson was even helpful in revising Bong’s script such that it had “humor and knowledge of slangs that I would have never come across otherwise.”

Despite a couple of delays on the release calendar, Bong said at Cinematheque’s Friends Film Festival in June 2024 that he’s always had full control over editing and final cut in his contract, and that Warner Bros. was reviewing his completed edit from November 2023.

“With ‘Okja’ and now ‘Mickey 17,’ I was given the final cut as part of my deal,” Bong previously told Empire. “The studio respected my final cut rights. Of course, during the editing process there are many opinions and many discussions that happen. But this film is my cut, and I’m very happy about it. It was a long process, but it was always smooth and respectful.”

“Mickey 17” co-stars Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, and Naomi Ackie, and it is based on Edward Ashton’s novel “Mickey 7.” The film opens in theaters April 18, 2025 in IMAX.