Amanda Knox nearly joined Robert Pattinson on an A24 Oscar campaign trail — until casting director Francine Maisler shut the idea down before it gained traction.

Speaking at a post-screening panel for Primetime at the Directors Guild on Saturday, Maisler revealed that director Lance Oppenheim floated casting Knox opposite Pattinson's Chris Hansen during early development. The role of Andie Bender, the ambitious producer who architects Hansen's To Catch a Predator-style sting operation, ultimately went to three-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever.

Maisler, whose credits include 12 Years a Slave, The Revenant, and Sinners — the latter earning her an Oscar nomination — told the audience the story directly.

"I'm going to tell a secret here. When I started this project, Rob was on the movie and before Merritt was cast, Lance brought up the idea of Amanda Knox. That's how crazy this director is," she said with a laugh.

Oppenheim, joining the panel virtually from London alongside Pattinson and Wever, confirmed the account. "Yes, there was a period of time that I would call Francine and I would drive her literally insane with just some very off the wall ideas," he admitted.

Maisler recalled her immediate response: "And I said, 'Don't ever say that again.'"

Who is the role that almost went to Knox?

Knox became an international headline figure after Italy controversially convicted her of murdering her roommate. She was ultimately acquitted and has since built a career as an author, stand-up comic, and podcaster. Casting her would have handed the film's supporting-actress slot — and its awards narrative — to a figure with no professional acting background.

Instead the role landed with Wever, and Maisler used the panel to make an explicit awards case for her. "I think she is extraordinary in this film. I think she deserves so much more attention for every piece of work she's done," she said.

That endorsement carries weight in a category with real congestion. Wever currently sits at No. 12 in Gold Derby odds for Best Supporting Actress, a race shaping up as one of the year's most stacked. A high-profile casting director publicly championing a performance at a guild screening is a standard — and deliberate — phase of a challenger campaign.

Where does Pattinson stand in the Best Actor race?

Pattinson, also a producer on Primetime, occupies stronger positioning: he sits inside the Gold Derby Top 5 for Best Actor. The panel offered a window into how he built the performance under a director treating his first narrative feature like a documentary set.

Oppenheim recalled giving Pattinson a blunt note in the second week of production: "I feel like you've gotten the Chris Hansen part really good ... but I also feel like you're doing Jerry Maguire and Dracula."

Pattinson's reply: "And I thought I was doing Mel Gibson and Braveheart."

Primetime marks Oppenheim's jump from documentary into narrative features, drawing on the sensationalized era of reality-television sting operations. He described the production method as deliberately unstable.

"We really, really tried to keep things carbonated and chaotic. And that's really what the movie's about too. It's about a production crew that's kind of going off the rails," he said, while calling the whole experience a "fever dream."

Pattinson said the setup freed him creatively. "I didn't have any fear of trying anything," he said. "Besides, I was the producer. Who was going to tell me no?"

What does the reveal change?

For awards watchers, the anecdote does two things. It puts Maisler — an Oscar-nominated casting director with guild clout — on record as Wever's advocate, which can shift supporting-actress conversation as voting bodies begin paying attention. And it adds a ready-made bit of campaign lore to the film's trail narrative: a first-time narrative director wild enough to pitch Amanda Knox, reined in by a casting veteran who knew exactly where the line sits.