He'd Never Seen the Show. He Wrote the Story Behind Primetime.
He had never seen the show.
When Esquire called Luke Dittrich to report a longform story on Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator, he had never watched an episode, he told The Hollywood Reporter. The assignment followed a tragedy in Texas that had put the hidden-camera series under scrutiny.
Assistant district attorney Bill Conradt died by suicide as a To Catch a Predator camera crew was planning to enter his home in Murphy, Texas, according to that account. Conradt had been caught exchanging messages expressing sexual interest in an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy, in an operation run with Perverted Justice and Dateline NBC, the long-running NBC news programme that carried To Catch a Predator with Hansen as host.
Dittrich's resulting investigation was titled "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die." It was published in September 2007, as The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this month. For the piece, Dittrich interviewed Hansen in a conversation he describes as contentious, an exchange that appears in the article's final section.
That article sat on the shelf for years. Then the rights were available, and a call a few years ago led to an option, meaning filmmakers paid for the exclusive right to develop it, Dittrich said in the new interview.
The result is Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim. The film dramatises the world of To Catch a Predator building toward the show's trip to Texas. The screenplay was written by debut screenwriter Ajon Singh, who was inspired by Dittrich's article, according to AP News. Robert Pattinson portrays Hansen. The film is being released in cinemas by A24.
In conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Dittrich discussed visiting the Primetime set, his memories of Hansen and how his view of the story has changed since 2007. He had reported the piece as an outsider to the programme. Seeing actors rebuild that control room nearly two decades later gave him a different vantage point.
For his part, Pattinson prepared largely by listening to Hansen's podcast, as Complex reported. He discussed his approach to playing the real-life TV host in an interview with AP News, which also noted Hansen has reacted to the portrayal.
For viewers who want background, Esquire has published its own explainer, "Here's the True Story Behind 'Primetime,'" on Hansen, Conradt and what the movie changes. The Hollywood Reporter has also published a review centred on Pattinson's performance as Hansen.
What makes this stand out is the chain. A writer unfamiliar with a hit series took one assignment, produced one magazine story, and that story became the foundation for a cinema release 19 years later.
