Chris Hansen might take legal action against A24 and the filmmakers behind Robert Pattinson's new movie, which is based on To Catch a Predator. [3] The situation, in Hansen's phrase, "feels sneaky and disingenuous." [3] The film, partially based on events from his Dateline NBC series, reaches American theaters September 25. [1][3] Saturday's file printed the mechanism of his objection: an invitation to watch conditioned on signing away legal claims, which he declined. Sunday's advance is the posture hardening around that refusal — the movie now has its ovation and its reviews, and its subject has ads, attorneys, and no screening.
The ads are the counter-programming. Hansen purchased preshow advertising on every screen showing the September 25 theatrical release. [1][2] Saturday's file recorded where the spots point — TruBlu, his predator-investigation streamer — and what didn't survive: a closing line calling the film "a Hollywood fantasy version," cut over fears of A24 blowback, with attorneys consulted. A man barred from the premiere bought the minutes before it, in every theater showing it. That sentence needs no adornment.
Pattinson answered the objection Saturday from the press conference, with the legal threat sitting in the question row. "I hope he likes the movie," the actor said of Hansen's comments — hoping, in other words, for an outcome that would require Hansen to see a film he has not been permitted to see on acceptable terms. [3] Hope is not a screening arrangement. Liking it would require watching it, and watching it still requires the signature Hansen will not give.
The underlying events are twenty years old and worth one paragraph because the film's claim on them is the whole dispute. Saturday's file recorded the source chain: Luke Dittrich's Esquire article on the 2006 sting against a Texas assistant district attorney who died by suicide as officers closed in with show cameras outside; Hansen uninvolved in the making; Denis Leary as his preferred casting; last year's Predators documentary covering the same series. A fiction about a real death, made without the man whose name is the intellectual property, premiered without him, applauded without him. The NDA is the hinge everything swings on: sign away claims, then watch; refuse, and stay home while your kitchen plays the Sala Grande.
Pattinson boarded early as a producer, drawn to a script he found electrifying — and the cast around him (Wever, Gisondo, Bridgers in a first feature role, Woodbine) spent Saturday's panel on memes replacing playground imitation as the culture's transmission belt. Oppenheim met the material through parody and stayed for the theatricality. None of that is the rights file. All of it is the context the rights file now overshadows: a well-liked premiere whose subject's absence is slowly becoming the premiere's second subject.
The Los Angeles Times' commentary gives the standoff its critical frame: "Primetime" and Chris Hansen deserve each other. [4] The film and its subject as mutual myth-making — each built, in different decades, on the theatrical staging of a confrontation. Saturday's panel heard the director's version, down to the catchphrase's stagecraft. Hansen finds the film's version of himself unrecognizable and possibly actionable. [3] Both men are in the business of the set-piece reckoning. Only one of them got to direct this one.
Accountability cinema its subject calls unaccountable: that is the culture file, and September 25 is its clock. A premiere ovation measures a room. A preshow ad measures a grudge with a media budget. A weighed lawsuit measures nothing until it is filed — and no filing appears in fetched copy. [3] Print the ads as bought, the lawyers as consulted, the screening as unseen, and the ovation as someone else's. and the ovation as someone else's. The calendar does the rest of the arguing: three weeks to theatrical, with a festival laurel on one side and a weighed complaint on the other. [3] Premieres end. Release dates arrive. Whatever Hansen files or forgoes, the ads already bought will play in the dark before every show — the one screening he controls completely.
-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin