Robert Pattinson's Chris Hansen film earns Venice ovation — and a rebuke from the real Chris Hansen

Robert Pattinson's turn as disgraced-television-host-turned-cultural-lightning-rod Chris Hansen drew a nearly eight-minute standing ovation at the world premiere of "Primetime" in Venice, but the reception from the man the film is actually about has been considerably cooler. Chris Hansen, the real journalist whose "To Catch a Predator" segments made him a household name and a punchline in equal measure, has spent the past two weeks publicly picking apart Pattinson's performance, even as the film itself lands as one of the best-reviewed premieres of this year's festival.

What happened at the Lido

"Primetime," the narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, screened in main competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Friday evening, with a repeat public screening scheduled for Sunday. Pattinson stars as a fictionalized version of Hansen, the NBC Dateline correspondent who spent the mid-2000s luring men to suburban sting houses on hidden camera; Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Bokeem Woodbine and musician Phoebe Bridgers, in her acting debut, round out the cast. Early reviews have been strong, with Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire and Deadline all praising Pattinson's performance as unsettling and precise even as critics wrestled with the film's queasy subject matter. At a press conference the same day, Oppenheim and Pattinson fielded questions about the ethics of dramatizing a real, living broadcaster; Pattinson said simply that he hoped Hansen would "like the movie."

• The ovation ran close to eight minutes by most trade counts, among the longer reactions of this year's festival, though estimates from outlets in the room ranged from seven to nine minutes.
• The film runs 110 minutes and is one of 21 titles competing for the Golden Lion, to be awarded September 12.
• Early aggregated critical scores have placed the film in the low-to-mid 90s percent range on review-aggregation sites, among the highest of any Venice competition title so far this year.
• A24 has set a wide theatrical release for September 25, roughly three weeks after the premiere.

How a canceled reality show became a Golden Lion contender

"To Catch a Predator" ran as a recurring Dateline NBC segment from 2004 to 2007, pairing Hansen with the advocacy group Perverted Justice to confront men who had arranged online meetings with decoys posing as minors. The series drew huge ratings and lasting notoriety, but it ended abruptly after a November 2006 sting in Murphy, Texas, in which police and an NBC camera crew converged on the home of Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr., a local assistant district attorney; Conradt shot himself as officers moved to arrest him. His sister later sued the network for wrongful death in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a case that survived NBC's motion to dismiss before the parties reached an undisclosed settlement in 2008, according to the court's published opinion. Oppenheim's film, described in its official synopsis from A24 as centering on the moment in 2006 when Hansen "set out to make television history," uses that history as its backdrop, examining the show's production machinery rather than simply restaging its most famous confrontations. The Conradt case remains a touchstone in journalism-ethics discussions of the risks of blending law enforcement with entertainment production — a tension the film, per early reviews, takes as its explicit subject rather than a footnote.

Hansen pushes back

The real Hansen, who now hosts his own syndicated investigative program, has not been shy about his discomfort. He told Fox News in August that A24's lawyers had asked him to sign away rights to his name and likeness before screening him the film, a condition he refused, and that he suspects the studio "used my name because it helps in a commercial enterprise." After seeing the trailer, he was more pointed still in an interview reported by Variety.

"That's not who I am. I'm a nice guy, except when it comes to criminals and predators."

Hansen has said Pattinson delivers "a pretty good imitation" but is "overly dramatic," adding that he was never consulted on casting and would have preferred Denis Leary. Pattinson, asked about the criticism at the Venice press conference, said he found something "electrifying" about the character Hansen played on television and hoped the film's inspiration would register as "some kind of compliment." Oppenheim has not responded directly to Hansen's complaints, letting the film speak in his stead.

Who is affected, and what happens next

Beyond Hansen himself, the film revives scrutiny of Perverted Justice, the volunteer group NBC paid to help set up its stings, and of the broader true-crime television genre the original series helped popularize; Dateline continued for years afterward under Hansen's successor hosts. For A24, "Primetime" is the studio's most high-profile awards-season entry out of Venice this year, and a strong festival run raises the stakes for a September theatrical release that will land three weeks after wide-release competitor titles from the same festival begin their own rollouts.

The Venice jury, led by Maggie Gyllenhaal, announces its awards on September 12, giving "Primetime" less than a week of further screenings to build momentum in the Golden Lion race. A24 opens the film nationwide September 25, when American audiences — and Hansen himself, who has said he still has not watched it in full — will get their own look. Hansen has given no indication he plans legal action, but his public commentary is likely to continue as the release date approaches and the studio's award-season campaign gets underway.