Robert Pattinson Debuts Chris Hansen Film Primetime at Venice Film Festival

Premiere at the Venice Film Festival

Director Lance Oppenheim presented his fiction feature debut, Primetime, in competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2026. Produced by Robert Pattinson alongside independent studio A24, the film dramatizes the broadcast era of the mid-2000s surrounding NBC investigative journalist Chris Hansen and his hidden-camera series To Catch a Predator. The production takes inspiration from the 2007 Esquire article "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die", combining documentary methods with fiction in what Oppenheim defines as a docu-fantasy. The film is scheduled to arrive in Italian cinemas on 15 October with distributor I Wonder.

Development and casting

Pattinson stars as Hansen, leading an ensemble cast that features Merritt Wever as the lead producer, Skyler Gisondo, and singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. Pattinson initially planned to serve only as a producer while casting another actor for the role, but decided to play Hansen after extensive script research and an eight-hour phone consultation with Oppenheim on Christmas Day. Production required strict schedule management, as Pattinson had recently become a father and moved directly from filming Primetime into production for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, where he portrays Antinous. Oppenheim compared Pattinson's versatility and screen presence throughout the shoot to Jack Nicholson.

Chris Hansen was an extraordinary figure: he had created an entire theatre with actors pretending to be children, houses turned into sets and props that became almost mythological, but all this artifice collided with an incredibly real and dangerous situation.

Mechanics of televised stings

The narrative examines the production practices behind To Catch a Predator, which ran on NBC between 2004 and 2008. The program placed adult actors posing as minors in online chatrooms to direct targets to equipped suburban homes, confronting suspects with concealed cameras before police conducted televised arrests. Oppenheim noted that his initial awareness of the show came through online memes and parodies, including an episode of South Park. The script tracks how Hansen pushed the show into primetime schedules while facing personal pressure, including photographers from competing publications pursuing evidence of his extramarital relationship, driving him to orchestrate a high-stakes sting against a prominent predator.

Hansen's reaction and festival reception

The real Chris Hansen was not involved in the production and refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement requested by A24. Without seeing the completed film, Hansen criticized Pattinson's performance in promotional trailers, calling the acting overly dramatic. Speaking on the Lido, Pattinson responded to the criticism by explaining that the movie was not designed as a conventional biopic, but as an examination of the boundaries separating journalism, entertainment, and voyeurism.

There is something electric in him. I hope that the inspiration his character gave to so many people for years can be seen as a compliment.