I’m getting an idea that Lance Oppenheim‘s Primetime (A24, 9.25), a presumably fact-based drama about Chris Hansen and his “To Catch A Predator” series, which was a fairly popular thing between 2004 and 2008…I’m getting an idea that Hansen will not be portrayed all that admiringly or sympathetically.
Pic will debut at the Venice Film Festival sometime in early September.
Robert Pattinson plays Hansen, and you can tell from the broadness of his performance in the trailer that Primetime might be a bit of a hit job. Pattinson also co-produced the film along with Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Fred Berger, William Iannaccone, Brighton McCloskey, Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster.
The film will presumably dramatize how To Catch A Predator blew up in 2008 when a latent or would-be predator, a Texas district attorney named Bill Conradt, committed suicide after a police raid on his home. Hansen had triggered the raid, which was about indications that Conradt had been speaking with whom he assumed was a 13 year-old by, but was in fact an actor pretending to be the boy as part of a sting operation.
Pic costars Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, Bokeem Woodbine, Anna Faris (as Mary Joan Hansen, Chris’ wife), Jonathan Lipnicki, Sean Bridgers and Tony Revolori.