Forget Osama Bin Laden, Robert Pattinson is going old school. While plenty of filmmakers (including Kathryn Bigelow and Peter Berg) are racing to bring a dramatization of Navy SEALs hunting down the Al Qaeda leader to the big screen, Pattinson is going in a different direction and has committed to playing the man who spearheaded the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In “Mission: Blacklist”, based on the novel by Eric Maddox.

Pattinson is attached to star in the film that will be out to buyers at Cannes, with Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire attached to direct from a script by Erik Jendresen. Pattinson will play Maddox, who accounted his own experience of being deployed to Iraq in the summer of 2003 to track down leads that can lead the US military to raids on High Value Targets within the Iraqi insurgency. Five months later, Saddam Hussein himself was in custody. “This movie is a gripping, edge of your seat thriller,” says producer Ross M. Dinerstein. “I have been inspired by Robert and Jean-Stéphane’s dedication to tell this story in the most authentic way possible, and I’m thrilled to add Hugo and Tim to our team.”

Pattinson set teenage girls’ hearts all aflutter after originating the role of Edward Cullen in the “Twilight” saga back in 2008, and has been doing his damnedest to get away from that teen idol reputation with his roles since. The final installment in the vampire trilogy will be released this November in “Breaking Dawn: Part II” and Pattinson is headed to Cannes later this month to premiere one of those anti-”Twilight” films, David Cronenberg’s “Cosomopolis.”