Chris Hansen is not at the Venice Film Festival. Robert Pattinson is. Lance Oppenheim's A24 picture Primetime had its photocall Saturday at the Palazzo del Casino, and Hansen was the subject of the press conference anyway. "Obviously, I hope he likes the movie," Pattinson said, asked about Hansen's objections and about the pre-show advertising Hansen bought for his streaming platform. [1]

Festival MSM will file star power. The invoice is a studio that asked the journalist whose name is the intellectual property to sign an agreement before he could watch a fiction about his own show, then premiered it without him. Hansen has said he declined an invitation to see the film because he was required to sign an agreement barring him from taking legal action against A24. [2] The Associated Press reported he was invited before the festival and took issue with the NDA. [3] Do not write that he has seen Primetime. Do not write NDA terms beyond that bar on claims.

Pattinson boarded early as a producer. He said he never set out to make a movie about Chris Hansen. He saw Ajon Singh's script. "There's something electrifying about it," he said. "I would hope, in some ways, the amount of inspiration that his character has given so many people who are involved in this for years now is some kind of compliment." [1] A compliment the subject has not been permitted to receive on terms he would accept is not a screening. It is a premiere.

The picture is loosely adapted from Luke Dittrich's Esquire article "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die." It dramatizes the year of a 2006 sting on Texas assistant district attorney Bill Conradt, who died by suicide as officers descended on his home with the show's cameras outside. [1] [3] Hansen was not involved in the making of the movie. He has said he thought Denis Leary should have played him, and has questioned the filmmakers' motives. Last year the series was also the subject of David Osit's documentary Predators, streaming on Paramount+. [3] Oppenheim said he first met To Catch a Predator through South Park parodies, then found Hansen's "have a seat right there" as theatrical as Tony Montana. He was confused as a child whether the show was a prank, a news program, or a circus with Hansen as ringleader. [1]

Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, and Bokeem Woodbine joined the Saturday panel. They took questions on the material, on Bridgers's first feature role, and on a film culture that has been whittled to memes. Oppenheim said he did not mind the meme factor, because Hansen was a viral-ready star before that language existed: a man who became a myth, a person who became a persona, who embraced the meme of himself and still worked a dark subject. Pattinson said his classmates used to imitate lines from whatever big movie had just come out, that the habit had seemed gone, and that memes had replaced it. His Hansen, a journalist noted, was already a viral phenomenon before release. [1]

Hansen, meanwhile, purchased preshow advertising on every screen showing the September 25 U.S. theatrical release. In the spot he directs audiences to TruBlu, his predator-investigation streamer, and delivers a variation on the catchphrase. He wanted to end the commercial by calling Primetime "a Hollywood fantasy version" of what happened. The line was cut over concerns about blowback from A24. Sources close to Hansen told THR he is consulting attorneys. [2]

Pattinson is filming The Batman in a year that already holds The Drama, The Odyssey, Primetime, and Dune: Part Three. He said he had a few hours to move from Primetime to Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and can hear a little Chris Hansen in that picture. [1] The laugh in the room is the festival file. The rights file is the empty chair. A24 will put Primetime in U.S. theaters on September 25. [1] [3] Venice concludes September 12. Hansen still has not watched the movie on terms that do not require him to surrender claims.

Oppenheim wanted to trace a journalistic crusader, a mercenary TV producer, and a Hollywood dreamer into a moment of crisis. [3] The crisis on the Lido is simpler. The man whose kitchen is the set piece bought ads in front of every screening and stayed home. Pattinson hopes he likes the movie. Liking it would require seeing it. Seeing it, as of Saturday, still required the signature Hansen would not give.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles