Robert Pattinson on Chris Hansen Criticism of ‘Primetime’

Robert Pattinson thinks Chris Hansen could come around on “Primetime,” a tense thriller about the television journalist and “To Catch a Predator” host, which premieres on Saturday afternoon at the Venice Film Festival.

The real-life Hansen has been vocal in his skepticism of the movie, which he said he hasn’t seen because he declined to sign a standard NDA from the studio, A24. But Hansen said that based on the trailer, he finds Pattinson’s portrayal “overly dramatic” and questioned Hollywood’s motives in dramatizing the popular Dateline NBC series about child predators. (However, Hansen admitted that his family “seem to think it’s a pretty good imitation.”)

“Obviously, I hope he likes the movie,” Pattinson said on Saturday’s Venice Film Festival press conference. “There’s something electrifying about him. I would hope the amount of inspiration his character has given a lot of people for years is some kind of compliment.”

Directed by Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut, “Primetime” is set in the mid-2000s and follows Hansen, then the host of Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” as he turns the pursuit of suspected child predators into primetime entertainment. Loosely based on the 2007 “Esquire” article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” the movie exposes the ethical limits of Hansen’s methods and the collision between journalism, policing and entertainment. “To Catch a Predator” ultimately ended in 2008 after facing some backlash over its methods of confronting the suspects.

“There’s something magnetic about his presence. I watched the show when I was younger and didn’t think about it,” Pattinson said. “There’s a strange alchemy — something he’s doing is the reason people are still talking about that show 20 years later. It’s not to do solely with the subject matter. It was something about the show that was groundbreaking, but then he’s someone centering it. There’s something, even after watching literally thousands of hours of it, you can’t put your finger on it.”

Pattinson was joined at Saturday’s press conference by Oppenheim and co-stars Skyler Gisondo, Merritt Wever and Phoebe Bridgers. Pattinson praised Bridgers, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter who makes her acting debut as a decoy in “Primetime.”

“She’s unbelievable,” Pattinson said. “I didn’t even know Lance and Phoebe were friends. When he suggested her, I was like ‘Phoebe Bridgers? Why don’t we just get the queen?’ Even on the first day, she was so relaxed. She didn’t seem nervous at all. She completely got the tone, and it’s a relatively difficult movie.”

Bridgers, for her part, described the filming process as “super intimidating.”

“When Lance asked me, I was like, ‘No way, dude,’” she recalled. “But it turns out, working with incredible people actually makes it way easier. I thought I was going to wither with all of these guys. Instead, it was just fun and free.”

Oppenheim, 30, is best known for documentaries like “Some Kind of Heaven,” “Spermworld” and the HBO series “Ren Faire.” He’s described “Primetime” as a “docu-fantasia,” a blend of his cinematic background. He remembers discovering “To Catch a Predator,” not through the show itself but through parodies on “South Park” and comedy website ebaum’s World.

“When I finally saw ‘To Catch a Predator,’ I was amazed,” Oppenheim said. “Chris Hansen had these one-liners like Tony Montana. But instead of ‘Say hello to my little friend,’ it was ”You see how this looks, right?’ I was always fascinated by the theatricality of the show. What happens when you turn one of the darkest subjects known to humankind into entertainment?”

Pattinson is having quite a year, starring in box office hits like “The Drama” and Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster “The Odyssey” as well as Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming “Dune: Part III.” And his schedule isn’t mellowing any time soon: Pattinson traveled to Venice from London, where he’s filming “The Batman: Part II.”

For what it’s worth, Pattinson doesn’t seem fazed by the nonstop clip of his work. “When you get the momentum going, it’s strangely not that hard,” Pattinson said. Plus, he cracked, “I just had a baby. I had no desire to go out at night, so suddenly I had twice as much time, which was helpful.”

But he joked that after filming projects back-to-back-to-back, he noticed his characters blending together.

“I can definitely hear a little Chris Hansen in ‘The Odyssey’ when I watch it,” he said with a laugh. “It was literally hours apart!”