Robert Pattinson's Chris Hansen Role Draws a Nine-Minute Ovation and a Legal Threat at Venice

Robert Pattinson's transformation into disgraced Dateline NBC host Chris Hansen got a nine-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere on Saturday, as the crowd inside the Sala Grande stretched its applause into chants for director Lance Oppenheim and co-star Phoebe Bridgers. "Primetime," the A24 crime thriller that reimagines the rise and unraveling of "To Catch a Predator," arrives as one of the most-buzzed titles of the 83rd Venice festival — and one of its messiest, after the real Hansen said he is exploring legal action over how the film uses his name and likeness.

Directed by Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut, "Primetime" is loosely built around the 2007 Esquire article "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die," which chronicled the suicide of Bill Conradt during a botched 2006 "To Catch a Predator" sting in Murphy, Texas. The film follows Hansen, played by Pattinson, as the show's ratings success curdles into obsession, tracking a fictionalized version of the Conradt case alongside the host's private guilt. Merritt Wever plays a show producer, Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers play decoys used to lure suspects, and Alex Winter appears as Conradt. A24 will release the film in U.S. theaters on September 25.

A Show Built on Public Humiliation

"To Catch a Predator" ran as a recurring "Dateline NBC" segment through the mid-2000s, pairing hidden cameras with decoys posing as minors to catch men arriving at sting houses for meetups arranged online. The series was a ratings hit for NBC but drew years of criticism from media ethicists and legal scholars over entrapment concerns and the show's practice of airing suspects' identities before any conviction. It was effectively ended after Conradt, a Texas prosecutor who never showed up to the sting house, died by suicide as police and a camera crew moved in on his home — the event at the center of both the Esquire article and Oppenheim's film.

Reviews out of Venice have been largely positive. Critic Luke Hicks of The Film Stage called the film a "thrilling indictment" and praised Pattinson's performance, writing that the actor "can do it all" and depicts Hansen with no redemptive qualities: "There's nothing redeeming here. Hansen is a shark." Hicks argued the film's real target is the audience that kept watching, noting "we might not be personally responsible ... but there's a reason why we're still talking about it in-depth twenty years later." The review singled out Oppenheim's visual style as hypnotic enough to implicate viewers in the same voyeurism the show trafficked in.

The Real Hansen Pushes Back

The reception has been less warm from the man Pattinson plays. Chris Hansen told The Spokesman-Review he has consulted lawyers about a possible suit against A24 over the use of his name, saying a legal contact told him "you probably have a decent case," though he added he was still weighing "how much time do you want to spend doing it." Hansen was more pointed about the project's ethics in the same interview.

"It feels very exploitive to me. It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me that they would do this and not even say, 'This is what we're doing.'"

Chris Hansen, to The Spokesman-Review

Hansen has said he declined to sign paperwork A24 required to preview the film before release; a person close to the studio has said the document was a standard nondisclosure agreement asked of all preview audiences, not a rights waiver, according to reporting on the dispute. Hansen has not seen the finished film, though he has separately bought advertising for his own streaming venture, TruBlu, to run ahead of "Primetime" screenings during the movie's first month in theaters. No lawsuit had been filed as of early September, and neither A24 nor Oppenheim has issued a public response to Hansen's specific legal claims.

Pattinson, for his part, has framed the role as an homage rather than an attack. "I hope he likes the movie," the actor told reporters in Venice, adding that he hoped the "amount of inspiration his character has given so many of us involved in this, over the years, comes across as some kind of compliment." Pattinson said he was drawn to what he called Hansen's screen "magnetism," the same quality he tried to translate to Sala Grande: "There's something magnetic about his presence. Even after watching literally thousands of hours of everything to do with him, you still can't quite put your finger on what it is."

"Primetime" now heads toward a wider awards conversation with its Rotten Tomatoes score sitting at 94 percent after early reviews, buoyed by Pattinson's reviews-friendly track record following "The Batman" and "Mickey 17." The film screens again through the remainder of the festival, which runs on the Lido through September 12, before A24 opens it nationwide September 25 — a rollout that will keep both the film's reception and Hansen's threatened legal fight in the news through the fall.