Robert Pattinson is making his first move into live theater — not as an actor, but as an executive producer. Variety reported July 28 that the film star is backing "The Holes," a new play by Max Wolf Friedlich, set to premiere off-Broadway this fall. Variety

Pattinson is executive producing through Icki Eneo Arlo, the company he runs with Brighton McCloskey, who also receives an executive producer credit. For both, it is a first foray into stage producing. The play is a decaying-bar drama set in a rapidly gentrifying upstate city, centered on a mysterious, padlocked back room.

Previews begin September 8 at The Wild Project, a 89-seat venue in the East Village. Opening night is September 22, and the run is scheduled to close October 18 — a six-week limited engagement, the standard commitment for an off-Broadway production testing whether a play can find an audience and potentially extend.

The cast includes Bubba Weiler, Grantham Coleman, Tina Benko, and Kyle Beltran. Michael Herwitz directs, reuniting with Friedlich after their collaboration on "Job," the two-hander that opened at Soho Playhouse in 2023 and transferred to Broadway's Helen Hayes Theater in 2024. "Job" starred Sydney Lemmon and Peter Friedman, both of whom appeared on HBO's "Succession."

Dramaturg Hannah Getts and Adam Rodner produce, with a co-producing roster that includes Cathy Sarkowsky, Alex Levy, Elizabeth Salem, Jeff Hahn, and Caryl Hahn. The creative team features scenic designer Anna Grigo, lighting designer Evan C. Anderson, sound designer Brandon Bulls, and costume designer Lily Cucinelli. "The Holes" also appeared in the 39th-season lineup of Vassar College's Powerhouse Theater program, which develops new work ahead of full productions. Playbill

Friedlich's path from "Job" to "The Holes" follows a pattern familiar to anyone who tracks off-Broadway: a playwright builds a reputation in small houses, and the next project carries a bigger producing team and more names on the investment roster. Pattinson's involvement is the variable that breaks the pattern. Film actors backing stage productions is not new, but it is usually a star stepping into a role — drawing advance ticket sales, the money already collected for future performances — rather than a name working behind the scenes on a play at a venue the size of a living room.

For a playwright whose last show moved from a 199-seat off-Broadway house to Broadway in under a year, the arrival of a Hollywood producer at the East Village stage door is the kind of detail the theater community reads closely. The next six weeks will tell whether "The Holes" can repeat that trajectory — or whether it plays its run and loads out.