Robert Pattinson thinks Chris Hansen could come around on “Primetime,” a tense thriller about the television journalist and “To Catch a Predator” host, which premieres on Saturday at the Venice Film Festival.
The real-life Hansen has been vocal in his skepticism of the movie, which he said he hasn’t seen because he declined to sign a standard NDA from the studio, A24. But Hansen said that based on the trailer, he finds Pattinson’s portrayal “overly dramatic” and questioned Hollywood’s motives in dramatizing the popular Dateline NBC series about child predators. (However, Hansen admitted that his family “seem to think it’s a pretty good imitation.”)
“Obviously, I hope he likes the movie,” Pattinson said at Saturday’s press conference. “There’s something electrifying about him. I would hope the amount of inspiration his character has given a lot of people for years is some kind of compliment.”
Directed by Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut, “Primetime” is set in the mid-2000s and follows Hansen, then the host of Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” as he turns the pursuit of suspected child predators into primetime entertainment. Loosely based on the 2007 “Esquire” article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” the movie exposes the ethical limits of Hansen’s methods and the collision between journalism, policing and entertainment. “To Catch a Predator” ultimately ended in 2008 after facing some backlash over its methods of confronting the suspects.
