That line, delivered by Robert Pattinson in a flat, unsettling tone, closes out the new trailer A24 dropped Thursday for “Primetime,” and it tells you most of what you need to know about the movie’s approach. This isn’t a warm nostalgia piece about a 2000s TV phenomenon. It’s something colder.
Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the man who became a household name hosting “To Catch a Predator,” the “Dateline NBC” segment that ran sting operations luring adult men to a house where they expected to meet a minor, only to be confronted on camera by Hansen and a waiting police unit. Director Lance Oppenheim’s film picks up in 2006, at the moment the show was pushed toward primetime and Hansen’s fame exploded along with it. A24 has set the release for September 25.
The trailer leans hard into that ascent. Former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker appears as himself, telling Hansen in one exchange, “I don’t really like your show, but America loves it. So I’m going to move you to primetime,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. Hansen’s response is to bolt down a network hallway shouting that the show is going to be “bigger than ‘Lost.'” It’s the kind of moment that plays as both triumphant and faintly grotesque, which seems to be the point.
Variety describes the project as a drama-thriller rather than a straight biopic, and it’s worth noting “Primetime” is a scripted narrative film, not a documentary. Oppenheim, best known until now for documentaries like “Some Kind of Heaven” and HBO’s “Ren Faire,” is directing his first narrative feature from a script by Ajon Singh, drawn from journalist Luke Dittrich’s reporting on Hansen and the show.
Critics who caught the trailer early aren’t reading it as a flattering portrait. The A.V. Club points to the documentary “Predators,” which reexamined the original series and argued its sting operations were often less about protecting children than about publicly humiliating people and feeding a TV ratings machine. Nothing in the new trailer suggests Oppenheim is interested in rehabilitating Hansen’s image.
The real “To Catch a Predator” ran from 2004 to 2007 before NBC pulled it, following a lawsuit connected to the suicide of a man confronted by police during one of the stings. It’s a detail that hangs over the trailer’s more triumphant beats.
Behind the camera, Pattinson is also a producer, alongside Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Fred Berger, William Iannaccone, Brighton McCloskey, Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster. SlashFilm has the rest of the cast list: Anna Faris as Hansen’s wife, Mary Joan, plus Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher and Bokeem Woodbine.
It’s a busy stretch for Pattinson either way. He’s currently on screens in A24’s “The Drama,” has a supporting turn in “The Odyssey,” and is set to appear in “Dune: Part Three” before the year is out — a run that, per IndieWire, has him spending 2026 largely playing characters who are somewhat off in one way or another. Hansen, going by this trailer, fits right in.
