Robert Pattinson steps into the unsettling intersection between criminal investigation and television spectacle in the newly released trailer for A24’s Primetime.
The film takes audiences back to 2006, when journalist Chris Hansen and the Dateline NBC team were turning internet sting operations into widely watched television. Pattinson portrays Hansen as an ambitious presenter convinced that the programme is about to reshape television history.
To Catch a Predator used hidden cameras and decoys who presented themselves online as minors. Adults who arrived at arranged locations were confronted by Hansen, questioned in front of television cameras and, in many cases, arrested by police waiting nearby.
The format attracted enormous audiences because it combined investigative journalism, criminal confrontation and reality television. Viewers watched suspects move from apparent confidence to panic after discovering that their conversations had been recorded.
However, its methods also generated difficult ethical questions. Critics questioned whether public humiliation had become part of the entertainment, whether journalists were influencing police operations and whether the programme encouraged audiences to treat serious criminal allegations as dramatic television moments.
The Primetime trailer suggests that the film will explore those tensions rather than simply reconstruct famous confrontations. Pattinson’s Hansen appears increasingly focused on ratings, cultural influence and the possibility of creating a programme larger than the news division that produced it.
The movie is inspired by real events and draws from journalist Luke Dittrich’s 2007 article examining one of the programme’s most controversial investigations. It has been written for the screen by Ajon Singh.
Lance Oppenheim directs the film, marking his first narrative feature after establishing himself through documentaries. His earlier projects frequently examined unusual communities, manufactured environments and the complicated relationship between reality and performance.
That documentary background may be especially important for a story in which television producers are attempting to capture reality while also shaping it into an episode with suspense, confrontation and a clear conclusion.
Pattinson is joined by Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Matthew Maher and Bokeem Woodbine. Singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers also appears in the film, adding another unexpected name to the ensemble.
Pattinson serves as one of the producers alongside a team that includes Ari Aster, Fred Berger and Lars Knudsen. His involvement continues a period in which he has moved between major franchise projects and darker, filmmaker-led productions.
The trailer’s visual style recreates the appearance of mid-2000s television, when online communication was rapidly entering everyday life but social-media broadcasting had not yet developed into its current form.
At that time, a national television programme could control how an encounter was recorded, edited and presented. Today, similar confrontations might unfold through livestreams, short videos and independent online investigators, making the story relevant beyond the period it portrays.
Primetime is scheduled to compete at the Venice International Film Festival before opening in cinemas on 25 September 2026.
The film’s greatest challenge will be balancing the seriousness of its subject with an examination of the television machinery surrounding it. The alleged offences cannot be reduced to entertainment, but the programme’s enormous popularity cannot be understood without recognising how effectively it used the language of suspense and public confrontation.
By focusing on both the presenter and the production process, Primetime appears ready to ask an uncomfortable question: when television exposes disturbing behaviour, at what point does investigation become performance?
