NBC’s To Catch a Predator was such a huge cultural reference for so many years, I didn’t even realize that the show was canceled nearly two decades ago. The last episodes aired in 2007, but it lingered in the cultural zeitgeist for a lot longer. To Catch a Predator was a seemingly simple concept: have a television show set online traps for child-predators, get those predators to show up at a house, then host Chris Hansen would step into the room and lecture the predators about how they were going to jail. The SWAT team would arrive soon after Hansen’s lecture. Well, they’ve made a movie about it. And Robert Pattinson is playing Chris Hansen!!! Bless his heart, he’s doing Hansen’s voice too. The movie is called Primetime.

Just listening to Pattinson’s Chris Hansen voice is making me respect the fact that Christopher Nolan convinced Pattinson to do a flat American accent in The Odyssey. You know Sparkles wanted to do some bizarre faux-Greek accent but Nolan told him “absolutely not.” The producers of Primetime had no such luck. But it sort of works – you can really tell that Pattinson studied all of those old To Catch a Predator episodes and he’s really trying to do Hansen’s peculiar vocal intonations. Pattinson is truly one of the great eccentrics of our time, he’s just churning out gonzo performance after gonzo performance. He’s also in Dune 3 this year!! I cannot wait to hear the voice/accent he uses in that.

The fact that this movie isn’t being branded as “loosely based,” nor are they shying away from saying that Pattinson is fully playing Chris Hansen… it’s interesting. I guess this was done with everyone’s approval, from Hansen to the old NBC team. I’m obsessed with Merritt Wever too, and I love that she’s in it (I think she’s one of the NBC producers).

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.