The volatile mix of journalism, reality entertainment, and law enforcement took off with shows such as Cops and America’s Most Wanted in the 1980s and 1990s. But it exploded with the arrival of To Catch a Predator in 2004, and recently, as seen in the documentary Predators (review here), there’s renewed interest in exploring how blurring these lines led to catastrophic results for society as a whole. Documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim makes his feature debut with Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson as controversial host Chris Hansen, who became the face of how this kind of exploitation could go terribly wrong.
A24 has dropped the first trailer for Primetime, with Pattinson starring as Hansen, an investigative journalist who made television history by exposing the underbelly of sexual predators for all of the world to see.
Without giving too much away about Hansen’s trajectory, he’s a guy who was constantly torn between the pursuit of ratings and doing what’s right legally, and that led to consequences I don’t think he was prepared for.
So much about this movie has been kept a secret that I actually forgot it was happening at all, and that Pattinson was playing Hansen. He’s joined in the cast by Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Anna Faris, and Phoebe Bridgers.
Primetime hits theaters this fall.
