{"id":1188176,"date":"2026-09-05T16:35:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1188176\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T16:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:35:23","slug":"robert-pattinson-hopes-chris-hansen-likes-primetime-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1188176\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Pattinson Hopes Chris Hansen Likes ‘Primetime’ Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChris Hansen<\/a> is not at the Venice Film Festival for this weekend\u2019s world premiere of a film inspired by his work on To Catch a Predator, but the man still proved to be the center of attention during Primetime<\/a>\u2018s press conference.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously, I hope he likes the movie,\u201d said Robert Pattinson<\/a> when asked about Hansen\u2019s early objections<\/a> to Lance Oppenheim<\/a>\u2018s A24<\/a> film and the fact that he purchased pre-show advertising<\/a> for his streaming platform. Pattinson stars as Hansen and boarded the film early as a producer but said, \u201cI never really set out to make a movie about Chris Hansen<\/a>. I never really thought about it, and then I saw [Ajon Singh\u2019s] script, and there\u2019s something electrifying about it. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOppenheim said he first discovered To Catch a Predator through parodies of it on shows like South Park. \u201cAnd when I finally saw To Catch a Predator, I was amazed. Chris Hansen was this like mythological being who had these one-liners that reminded me of Tony Montana [in Scarface]. His version of \u2018say hello to my little friend\u2019 was \u2018have a seat right there.\u2019 I was always fascinated as a young child with the theatricality of the show. I was so confused by it. Was it a prank show? Was it a news show? Was it a circus with Chris Hansen as a ringleader?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRobert Pattinson as Chris Hansen in Primetime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tScreenshot<\/p>\n

\n\tPrimetime<\/a> is loosely adapted by first-time screenwriter Singh from an Esquire article by Luke Dittrich and dramatizes the darkest year of Hansen\u2019s tenure on To Catch a Predator. Pattinson stars opposite Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers and Bokeem Woodbine, all of whom joined the panel discussion today. They fielded questions about the challenging material, the process of putting the cast together, Bridgers\u2019 debut feature-film role, and how much of online film culture has been whittled down to memes and viral jokes.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth Oppenheim and Pattinson said they don\u2019t mind the meme factor when it comes to their work, especially for something like Primetime because Hansen was such a viral-ready star long before that was part of the cultural lexicon. \u201cThe idea of a man who became a myth, a person who became a persona, a person who embraced the meme of himself, and yet still continued to do work in a very, very serious and dark subject, I thought that would make for such an interesting film,\u201d Oppenheim said.<\/p>\n

\n\tPattinson said when he was younger and started getting into movies, he noticed how his classmates at school would always imitate individual lines from whatever big movie had just come out. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI felt like that had been completely gone from culture for like years and years. And suddenly realized it\u2019s been replaced by memes, and I quite like that,\u201d he explained after it was mentioned by a journalist that his role as Hansen had already become a viral phenomenon prior to release. \u201cI always really liked quoting lines from Jim Carrey movies and stuff like that. I loved that. I used to know [all the lines] from The Mask by heart; everybody would do Austin Powers and all these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPattinson, who is filming The Batman sequel<\/a> during a year that will see consecutive releases<\/a> of The Drama, The Odyssey, Primetime and Dune: Part Three, had such a quick turnaround from filming Primetime that he had just \u201ca few hours\u201d to segue to Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/a>. \u201cI definitely can hear a little Chris Hansen in The Odyssey when I watch it,\u201d he said, to much laughter in the room.<\/p>\n

\n\tOppenheim\u2019s Primetime will be released theatrically in the United States by A24 on Sept. 25. The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival concludes with an awards ceremony on Sept. 12.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBokeem Woodbine, Phoebe Bridgers, Robert Pattinson, Skyler Gisondo and Merritt Wever at the Primetime photocall during the 83rd Venice Film Festival at Palazzo del Casino on Sept. 5.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Kate Green\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Hansen is not at the Venice Film Festival for this weekend\u2019s world premiere of a film inspired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1188177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[21211,321969,77,322007,3943,321970,50519,16,15,302054],"class_list":["post-1188176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-a24","tag-chris-hansen","tag-entertainment","tag-lance-oppenheim","tag-movies","tag-primetime","tag-robert-pattinson","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-venice-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117219408925515666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1188177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}