When “Primetime” moviegoers sit down in theaters to see Robert Pattinson play “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen, they are first going to get a message from Chris Hansen himself. Not because he’s involved with the A24 film at all, but because the journalist purchased ads for his true crime network TruBlu to run as part of the previews.
The former NBC “Dateline” reporter is the complicated subject of the upcoming Lance Oppenheim crime thriller based on the rise and fall of his hit 2000s TV show, in which Hansen confronted alleged pedophiles who were lured to a sting house by adults posing as teens online.
The ads are for his boutique true crime streaming network, TruBlu, and according to Entertainment Weekly are set to run exclusively in front of “Primetime” for at least the first four weeks of its theatrical run.
“I’m going to need everyone in the theater to take a seat right over there,” Hansen says in the ad, quoting one of the lines he would regularly say to the various predators he would confront. The TruBlu streaming service offers true crime series and documentaries, including “Takedown With Chris Hansen,” a spiritual successor to “To Catch a Predator.”
“Primetime” retells the story of how “To Catch a Predator” became an NBC ratings hit and a pop culture sensation through the simple formula of luring alleged predators, Hansen and his camera team confronting them with their online chat logs, and police arresting them as they left the sting house.
But the show’s rise came with debates over the legal and journalistic ethics of Hansen’s team and their primary collaborator, the online volunteer group Perverted Justice, which organized the sting operations and provided chat logs to law enforcement for potential prosecution. It all came to a head in 2006 when Dallas Assistant District Attorney Bill Conradt committed suicide with a gun after Hansen’s team and local law enforcement arrived at his house with a warrant after Perverted Justice identified him as a target.
Conradt’s suicide became the basis of an Esquire article in 2007 called “Tonight on ‘Dateline’ This Man Will Die,” which serves as the adaptational material for “Primetime.”
A24 will release the film in select theaters on Sept. 25 with a nationwide expansion in October.
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