It’s possible to argue that Freddie Highmore has been playing a homewrecker for the past three years. Norman Bates is the ultimate homewrecker, doing it not only from within the family, but within the body of someone who is otherwise an exemplar of family unity. Highmore’s portrayal of Norman Bates on A+E’s Bates Motel has been a thing to behold, a performance that turns skepticism over some newbie taking on an iconic role into admiration for an actor seizing hold of a character and making it wholly their own. (Paging Mads Mikkelsen.) But now, he gets to play a more traditional wrecker of homes: Variety reports Highmore has signed on to star in the upcoming dramatic comedy Holding Patterns.
Lil’ Norman Bates will be portraying an “unmotivated man in his mid 20s still living at home with his mother and stepfather, who falls for a young woman who has a serious boyfriend.” So, basically he’ll be playing a male embodiment of Millennial culture. All he needs is a GoFundMe campaign for an artisanal non-toxic dye business and he’ll be good to go. He’ll be joined by costars Haley Joel Osment and Odeya Rush, presumably as the cuckolded boyfriend and the woman Highmore wants to have sex with (although swapping actors in those roles would probably make for a more interesting movie). The movie is being helmed by writer-director Jake Goldberger (Don McKay), and filming has begin in Mobile, Alabama—“home of the unemployed layabout trying to fuck someone in a serious relationship,” as the city’s tourism office doubtless declares.