Look out, Gotham City: the Bat and the Cat are everywhere in 2026. With five movies apiece gracing the silver screen during this calendar year, Anne “Catwoman” Hathaway and Robert “Batman” Pattinson are leading the pack when it comes to performers with the largest number of potential 2027 Oscar contenders.
While the duo didn’t overlap in the extended Bat-verse — Hathaway played the Dark Knight’s favorite cat burglar in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy-capping The Dark Knight Rises, while Pattinson is our current Caped Crusader in Matt Reeves’ The Batman and The Batman Part II — they do cross paths in Nolan’s The Odyssey, which is currently burning up the box office and Gold Derby’s Oscar predictions. Coming out of that film, both actors have a path to the Oscars that could prove shorter than Odysseus’ monster-laden route from Troy to Ithaca.
We’ve already assessed where we’d rank Nolan’s Old World epic on Hathaway’s list of contenders, and did the same for their shared co-star Zendaya, who happens to be in three movies this year with Pattinson. Zendaya also joins previous Best Actress nominee Sandra Hüller — the only member of the quartet not in The Odyssey — in having four contenders this cycle.
Here’s how we see Pattinson’s various roles stacking up against each other as he gets ready to be a Primetime Oscar player seeking his first-ever nomination.
Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli can claim bragging rights for releasing the year’s first R. Patz-Zendaya collab with this early spring hit from A24 about a soon-to-be-married couple who learn some uncomfortable secrets about each other. The stars lured young audiences in particular into theaters, where the dark marital comedy’s various twists and turns resulted in many dropped jaws in the room and much social media discourse afterwards.
Despite clearing the $100 million mark globally — an impressive feat for a small-scale movie in this day and age — The Drama is destined to remain a better example of Zendaya and Pattinson’s commercial appeal than their awards appeal, with a majority of Oscar voters unlikely to be in on the squirm-inducing joke at the movie’s center. Fortunately, both actors have nowhere to but up with their other contenders.
4. The Odyssey
Let the record show that this placement isn’t a reflection on Pattinson’s delightfully daffy turn as The Odyssey‘s resident human-sized villain, Antinous, a committed coward who takes full advantage of the mighty Odysseus’ (Matt Damon) absence by cozying up to the missing general’s wife, Penelope (Hathaway), and unnerving Ithaca’s wet-behind-the-ears heir apparent, Telemachus (Tom Holland). In fact, Gold Derby oddsmakers are currently giving Pattinson the edge in the race for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, ranking him at No. 7 over his Odyssey co-stars Holland (No. 8) and John Leguizamo (No. 9) as Odysseus’s doggedly faithful servant, Eumaeus.
With only one of those three actors likely to make the cut, though, we’re thinking that the Leguizamo surge is only going to keep building in the weeks and months ahead based on his career-best reviews and years of faithful service to Hollywood in films like Carlito’s Way, Summer of Sam, and Moulin Rouge. Also, this is Leguizamo’s only shot at an Oscar nod this year, whereas Pattinson still has the following three arrows in his quiver.
Dated for 2026 on Netflix’s release schedule, Here Comes the Flood pairs Pattinson with Denzel Washington and Daisy Edgar-Jones for a cat-and-mouse thriller overseen by Oscar-nominated Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles. While it hasn’t yet been confirmed whether Pattinson will be the cat or the mouse, playing second fiddle to the two-time Oscar-winning Washington in a crime-laced picture is a proven way to garner awards attention: just ask Don Cheadle, who won a SAG Actor Award for his supporting turn in 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress; Ethan Hawke, who scored a Best Supporting Actor nod for 2001’s Training Day; and even the legendary Ruby Dee, who picked up a late-career Best Supporting Actress nomination for 2007’s American Gangster.
Not for nothing, but Meirelles also has a strong Oscar track record with actors as well; the City of God helmer has previously directed Rachel Weisz to a Best Supporting Actress win for The Constant Gardener, and his Two Popes headliners Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce to nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, respectively. The combined power of Washington and Meirelles could get the dams to break for Pattinson… provided Netflix doesn’t reschedule this Flood for 2027.
Forced to choose between Pattinson’s two heel turns as would-be kingslayers in spectacle-heavy, Imax-sized blockbusters, we’re throwing our lot in with the one from the distant future instead of the distant past. Due in theaters on Dec. 18, Denis Villeneuve’s concluding chapter in the Dune series is widely considered to be The Odyssey‘s main rival for Oscar attention among the year’s major studio offerings, but part of the reason why we like Pattinson’s odds here is that he has fewer Supporting Actor rivals on Arrakis than he does in Ithaca.
As master conspirator Scytale, the actor is pivotal to bringing about the downfall of Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, a storyline that’s poised to give this final installment a dramatic and emotional heft that voters may have felt the previous two installments lacked — from an acting standpoint at least. (While Dune and Dune: Part Two each scored multiple nods, the A-list cast has yet to be recognized with nominations.) Frankly, the only supporting player with enough meaty material to pull focus from Pattinson is Jason Momoa, returning as a futuristic clone of Paul’s long-dead right hand man, Duncan Idaho. Then again, it would be just like Aquaman to sink the Batboat on its way to the Oscars.
1. Primetime
The success of last year’s buzzy documentary Predators proved that America remains fascinated by the To Catch a Predator phenomenon that defined true crime TV in the early aughts. And sure enough, the first teaser trailer for Primetime, starring Pattinson as Predator host Chris Hansen, went viral almost immediately following its internet debut in May. That’s a good sign that the actor might have his second A24-distributed hit of 2026 when the movie opens in theaters in September.
The feature filmmaking debut of Lance Oppenheim — who helmed the breakout HBO docuseries Ren Faire in 2024 — Primetime is likely to fuse satire and social commentary as it looks back on the days when Hansen’s show dominated the Nielsen ratings. The teaser indicates that Pattinson is fully committed to the bit, mimicking both the host’s voice and his grandiose sense of self. While the Best Actor race is already crowded with big names, Gold Derby oddsmakers do notably have him among the Top 10 contenders for a nomination, currently ranking him at No. 8 ahead of The Social Reckoning‘s Jeremy Strong and Michael‘s Jaafar Jackson. If the movie delivers, Pattinson may finally be able to make an Oscar his prey.
