The peak of reality TV in the 2000s was a strange time. People were tuning in weekly to watch cops pull people over, root for Flavor Flav find love, or see kids run a Western ghost town with no adult supervision. But there’s one reality show that seemed to sum up this strange chapter in television history: To Catch A Predator, a series on Dateline where host Chris Hansen would set up sting operations to confront suspected child predators.
The obvious voyeuristic thrill of seeing criminals get caught, combined with the noble feeling of making the world a better place, made To Catch A Predator quickly become a staple of American pop culture. Now, this unique story is getting the movie treatment with Primetime, a true-crime origin story starring Robert Pattinson. Check out the trailer for the movie below.
Primetime stars Pattinson as Chris Hansen, Merritt Wever as his producer, Skyler Gisondo as sting decoy actor Dan Plumb, Anna Faris as Mary Joan Hansen, and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker as himself. The movie also stars Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, Tony Revolori, and Creed Bratton in supporting roles.
If this movie almost looks like a true-crime documentary, or even an episode of To Catch A Predator itself, this is by design. This is the narrative feature film debut of director Lance Oppenheim, who previously made the documentaries Some Kind of Heaven and Spermworld, as well as the vastly underrated HBO Max documentary series Ren Faire.
That feeling of peak reality TV is present from the get-go, from Hansen yelling, “I’m gonna be bigger than Lost!” and a massive wall showing the TV schedule at the time. There are also some real-life moments shown, like a camouflaged police officer tackling a suspect as he leaves the house. This actually happened after the investigation in Ft. Myers, Florida, suggesting that this movie will encompass the good, the bad, and the ugly of the series’ run, possibly including the time a suspect ended his life in front of the cameras.
This borderline-sleazy attitudes seem to form the main theme of the movie itself. “Predator has never earned the recognition it deserves,” Hansen says. When Plumb says he doesn’t want to be a bad person, Hansen replies, “Your definition of bad and my definition of bad are vastly different.”
Primetime examines the ethics of turning crime into entertainment. This is a true-crime thriller that takes things one step further by being about true-crime TV. Imagine Nightcrawler, but on a bigger scale. Instead of local newscasts, this focuses on national — and primetime — television.
