Robert Pattinson Plays Chris Hansen in A24’s Primetime

Primetime, the first fiction feature from documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, opens in Europe on 23 September and in the US on 25 September. Made for A24, it stars Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, host of To Catch a Predator, the mid-2000s TV programme that confronted men on camera as they arrived to meet teenagers.

The film has already played in the main competition at Venice, where it received a seven-minute ovation and critics called Pattinson’s performance one of the strangest and strongest of his career. The real Chris Hansen has not seen it, but he has called it an insult and bought advertising before every screening. Here is what we know about the film, the true story behind it and why it has caused such a stir.

What the film is about

The story is set in 2006. Hansen is a correspondent for the NBC newsmagazine Dateline, and his To Catch a Predator segment grows from a one-off report into a network hit. Every episode follows the same pattern: adult volunteers pose as children in online chats, the contact is invited to a house rigged with hidden cameras, and instead of a teenager, Hansen walks into the kitchen holding a printout of the chat. When the man leaves the house, police arrest him.

The film shows how this machine works from the inside: producers, decoy actors, camera crews and negotiations with the police and network executives. The higher the ratings, the greater the pressure — the show moves into prime time and competes with Lost for viewers. Reviewers say that as the story unfolds, Hansen becomes increasingly intoxicated by his role as an avenging host, and the line between journalism, justice and entertainment disappears.

Ajon Singh’s screenplay is based on Luke Dittrich’s 2007 Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die”, which examined a single operation by the programme that ended in a man’s death.

The true story behind it

To Catch a Predator ran as part of Dateline NBC from November 2004 to December 2007, with about twenty episodes. The online conversations were handled by the watchdog group Perverted-Justice, whose volunteers posed as minors. The programme drew huge audiences: some episodes were watched by more than 10 million people.

The turning point was a sting in the small Texas town of Murphy, near Dallas, in November 2006. Over four days, 25 men were caught there. One of the people chatting with a decoy turned out to be a local prosecutor, Louis William “Bill” Conradt. He did not show up at the meeting, and on 5 November police arrived at his home with a search warrant — accompanied by an NBC crew. As officers entered the house, Conradt shot himself.

Conradt’s sister sued NBC for $105 million, claiming the network had pushed police into harsh and unnecessary tactics for the sake of dramatic footage. The case was settled in June 2008 for an undisclosed sum. NBC officially said the programme had run its course, but the Murphy case badly damaged its reputation. That episode is at the heart of the film.

Who made it and who is in it

Lance Oppenheim is best known as a documentary maker: he directed Some Kind of Heaven, about life in a vast Florida retirement community, and the HBO documentary series Ren Faire. Primetime is his first fiction feature. The project was announced in October 2024 with Pattinson initially attached only as a producer; he took on the role of Hansen later.

Alongside Pattinson, the cast includes:

• Merritt Wever as Andie Bender, Hansen’s producer at Dateline;
• Skyler Gisondo as Dan Plumb, a young actor hired to play a teenager during the stings (based on real-life decoy Dan Schrack);
• Phoebe Bridgers as Del Harvey, another decoy performer;
• Alex Winter as prosecutor Bill Conradt;
• Anna Faris as Mary Joan Hansen, the host’s wife;
• Matthew Maher, Bokeem Woodbine, Jessica Hecht, Jonathan Lipnicki, Tony Revolori and Creed Bratton.

Former NBC chief Jeff Zucker appears as himself — and, according to the director, enjoyed the film.

The producers include Pattinson, Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen (Square Peg), along with Range Media Partners. Filming took place in New Orleans from February to the end of March 2025 under the working title Bluefin Tuna, a common way of keeping attention away from a set. The finished film runs 110 minutes.

Venice and the first reviews

The world premiere took place on 5 September in the main competition of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, where the audience gave the film a standing ovation of about seven minutes. It did not win an award: this year’s Golden Lion went to May el-Toukhy’s drama Woman Unknown.

Reviews have been largely enthusiastic. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 93% approval rating from 40 critics with an average score of 7.5 out of 10, and on Metacritic it scores 73 out of 100. The BBC’s Nicholas Barber gave it five stars out of five and called Pattinson’s performance extraordinary — exaggerated and theatrical without ever being arch. Variety’s Jessica Kiang praised his uncanny impression and called the whole cast dazzling.

Many reviewers say Pattinson plays not a biography but a portrait of a man intoxicated by his own moral authority: his Hansen is both a brilliant television personality and a figure almost out of a horror film. Skyler Gisondo has been singled out too — as the decoy Dan he combines light humour with real despair, and it is through his character that the film shows the cost of the show for the people who worked on it.

Some reviews are more reserved. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called the film a morbidly fascinating inquiry into performative justice but found the screenplay a little heavy-handed. The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager wrote that Pattinson’s Hansen does not resemble a real person. Some critics compared Primetime with David Osit’s 2025 documentary Predators about the same programme, and not in the drama’s favour: in their view it adds little to what has already been told.

How it was shot

Cinematographer David Bolen mixes several image formats. Scenes of “television” reality have the texture of mid-2000s consumer digital cameras, while the rest has the soft, saturated colour of modern cinema. A critic at The Film Stage compared the effect to a moth drawn to a lamp: the viewer ends up as someone who cannot tear themselves away from the screen.

The deeper Hansen sinks into his show, the more subjective the camera becomes, and the realistic style gradually turns almost hallucinatory. The score is by Ari Balouzian and the editor is Daniel Garber.

Pattinson captures Hansen’s voice and manner very precisely — even Hansen admitted the voice impression was “pretty good”. IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio, who gave the film a B, noted that the resemblance is only a starting point: Pattinson plays a man who is visibly unwell in the head, and the further the film goes, the less his Hansen looks like a news anchor.

What the real Chris Hansen says

Hansen did not work with the filmmakers and says nobody asked his opinion about how he would be portrayed. In May 2026 he said he had been contacted and asked not to comment on the project. He refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement that A24 offered before a private screening and consulted lawyers.

After the Venice premiere, Hansen told The Hollywood Reporter the film was “a complete work of fiction” and “an insult to the thousands of men and women who work hard every day to protect children from predators”. In his view, the filmmakers turned important, challenging and risky work into a horror film. At the same time, he stressed that he is not angry and has no issue with Pattinson, calling him a great actor and a nice guy.

Hansen’s response was pure television. He bought advertising time before every screening of Primetime in American cinemas. In the spot he stands in a kitchen, the setting his viewers know well, delivers his famous line inviting the audience to take a seat and then promotes his streaming service TruBlu. The ad originally ended by calling Primetime a Hollywood fantasy version of real events, but that ending was cut over fears of legal action from A24.

When to watch

The film opens in France and Germany on 23 September and in the US on 25 September through A24. The Benelux release is set for 29 October.

Cast, stills and the trailer are on the Primetime page in our AMDB database, where you can also leave a review after watching.