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Robert Pattinson is set to take on the ambitious role of real-life paedophile hunter Chris Hansen in upcoming A24 film Primetime.
The British actor, 40, has already appeared in the likes of The Drama alongside Zendaya, and the villainous Antinous in Sir Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, but hasn’t quite wrapped up his blockbuster year just yet.
Primetime is set to premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with a teaser, which features Robert’s dark portrayal of TV presenter Hansen, 66, already being dubbed ‘trailer of the year’.
The film focuses on NBC and Hansen’s mission to make history on controversial reality show To Catch a Predator. But what was the TV show all about?
What was To Catch a Predator about?
The premise of To Catch a Predator was to air real life footage catching adults trying to engage in sexual activities with children below the age of 16.
The show featured stings, confrontations, and even arrests, all hosted by Dateline NBC presenter Hansen.
Producers on the show would collaborate with online watchdog group Perverted-Justice to pose as underage children in chat rooms.
The suspected sexual predator would then arrive at a fake property met with adult decoys who would interact with them before being confronted by Hansen, who would approach them with his infamous line: ‘Why don’t you have a seat right there?’
The suspects would often argue their case, or flee the scene only to be arrested by local law enforcement waiting outside.
Premiering in November 2004, the show was a huge success at the time and drew in ratings of 7,000,000 per episode, making it a cultural phenomenon across America.
Why was it cancelled?
The programme aired just 20 episodes between 2004 and 2007 while it was on TV, but was cancelled in 2008 following the suicide of Bill Conradt.
Conradt, 56, was an assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas, who was accused of exchanging messages with a Perverted-Justice decoy who was posing as a 13-year-old boy.
A sting had been operating for weeks, before Conradt stopped online communication and it was made clear that he wouldn’t be travelling to an intended meet-up.
Instead, for the first time on the show, they decided to take to sting to the suspect’s home, with an arrest warrant issued on the day.
Hansen, a television crew, and a seven-man SWAT team arrived at Coradt’s house, forcing open a sliding-glass door to eventually confront him in his home.
He was seen standing in the hallway, declaring ‘I’m not gonna hurt anybody’, before shooting himself.
Conradt’s estate, which was managed by his sister Patricia, sued Dateline for $105 million and the case was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Following the incident, the show attracted criticism, being accused of ‘making news, rather than reporting news’, and that To Catch a Predator was ‘blurring the lines of being a news organisation versus an agency of law enforcement’.
Black Mirror creator and critic Charlie Brooker said of the show: ‘When a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child-rapists, you know it’s doing something wrong,’ adding that it ‘had a whiff of entrapment’.
Hansen has insisted that the show was not cancelled because of Conradt’s suicide, instead suggesting that it had simply ‘run its course’.
Since it was taken off air, the show has been rebooted it twice. First called Hansen vs Predator, and then later a spin-off called Takedown with Chris Hansen, which aired on the TruBlu streaming network, a true crime network he co-founded.
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What has Chris Hansen said about Primetime?
Hansen doesn’t appear to be taking the news of Primetime’s release well, saying the upcoming film is ‘totally made up’.
‘And that’s the part of this that the public needs to know, is that this is a work of fiction,’ he told Entertainment Tonight.
But it wasn’t all criticism, as the presenter added that Pattinson does a ‘pretty good imitation’ of him in the trailer.
He’s yet to watch the film, after claiming lawyers at film production company A24 ‘wanted me to sign away my rights to my name, image and brand, essentially, as well as any potential legal rights that would come out of the movie’.
‘I couldn’t sign that, so they didn’t show me the film. I went all the way over there.’
A source close to A24 said the NDA Hansen was asked to sign is the same that every preview audience must adhere to for an unreleased project.
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