Robert Pattinson jolts Venice with Primetime, his controversial film about predator hunters

Robert Pattinson shook up the Venice Film Festival with Primetime, a controversial film about a television host who creates a program to hunt alleged child predators.

The film is competing for the Golden Lion and had already caused a stir when its first images appeared. It draws on NBC’s controversial reality program To Catch a Predator, broadcast from 2004 to 2007, in which host Chris Hansen lured alleged predators to fake dates with minors and exposed them on television.

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From the beginning I felt very attached to this project and to everyone involved in it.

Pattinson, who also produced the film, said he had felt closely connected to the project and everyone involved from the beginning. Speaking alongside director Lance Oppenheim, he described the role as a challenge. The production took place just before he began filming Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

The actor also joked about the difficulty of the accent. “It was very difficult for me,” he said, adding that he could hear “a little bit of Chris Hansen in The Odyssey” when he watched it.

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It was very difficult for me.

Hansen praised Pattinson’s performance after the trailer was released, saying the actor had clearly practiced imitating him. But Hansen also said the portrayal was too dramatic, even as he acknowledged that the imitation was fairly good. He did not rule out legal action because the film presents him in a notably negative way.

The cast includes American singer Phoebe Bridgers, who plays Hansen’s wife in her film debut.

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It is clear that he has been practicing to imitate me, and although I think it is too dramatic, I think the imitation is quite good.