"Paterno" filmmakers made one thing clear this week: the HBO movie is not about Jerry Sandusky.

The movie instead focuses on Paterno's swift downfall after Sandusky was arrested on child sex abuse charges.

"We didn't want to do the Sandusky pedophile story," said HBO Films president Len Amato, speaking to reporters Thursday during a "Paterno" press conference at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. "That wasn't of interest to us. And we knew we didn't want to do a story that would not embrace the experiences of the victims because that was one of the casualties of the whole episode."

"Paterno," is set to premiere this spring on HBO, but the network hasn't released a specific date.

A new photo from HBO Films shows Kathy Baker and Al Pacino as Sue and Joe Paterno in "Paterno," which is set to premiere this spring. (Atsushi Nishijima/HBO)

The movie centers on the two-week period in November 2011 after Sandusky's arrest when Penn State football coach Joe Paterno announced plans to retire before being fired by telephone at night.

"It's Shakespearean ... and it happened so quickly," Amato said. "When you consider the day after (Paterno's) 409th victory, Sandusky was arrested and the sequence of events in the next two weeks and then what happened in the next six months, I think that was very stimulating to Barry Levinson and our writers."

The film does not answer what Paterno knew about his defensive coordinator and when he knew it, according to Levinson, the director.

"I think the film has to deal with the complexity of it all, rather than say he did this or he didn't do that," he said. "The questioning of it is part of the fabric of the piece. It truly is a tragedy."

A preview of the film was not made available to TV reporters, but a trailer showed Paterno focused on football.

The movie stars Al Pacino as Joe Paterno, Kathy Baker as Paterno's wife, Sue, and Riley Keough as Sara Ganim, the 23-year-old Patriot-News reporter who broke the Sandusky story and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ganim, now a CNN reporter and consultant on the film, told reporters she had "a mild panic attack" watching Keough play a scene from her life.

She said many people in State College "are still torn and debate Paterno's legacy."

Riley Keough as Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim in HBO's "Paterno." (Atsushi Nishijima/HBO)

Riley Keough said she was drawn to playing Ganim in the film because she loved "seeing a reporter who is still green" and breaking a big investigative story a couple years out of college.

"I've never seen that before," Keough said.

"Me neither," Levinson said.

To get into his role, Pacino studied Paterno, but he did not go to State College, he told reporters via satellite during the press conference.

"The question isn't just what he knew, it's what he did about it," Pacino said.

It's a question that may never have a clear answer - especially to fans.

"I think at the end of the day there will be people who believe (Paterno knew about the abuse) and there will be people who don't," Levinson said.