Robert Pattinson has spent the last decade-plus treating movie stardom like some kind of elaborate public dare. Between the criminal desperation of the Safdie brothers’ “Good Time,” the operatic arthouse psychosis of Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse,” and even his bruised emo kid-turned-Bruce Wayne in Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” the actor’s career has increasingly revolved around figures trapped inside social ecosystems they don’t fully understand. It makes some sense then that the unnerving first teaser for A24‘s “Primetime” puts Pattinson at the center of another uniquely American nightmare.
Directed by documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut, this upcoming A24 drama is inspired by NBC’s chilling and wildly controversial “To Catch a Predator,” with Pattinson set to play a special version of broadcast journalist Chris Hansen during the franchise’s peak popularity in the mid-2000s. The “Primetime” teaser itself is brief and deeply eerie, presenting television reality programming from this century as a swift moral execution narrated by Pattinson’s creepy new voice.
Fluorescent lighting, jittery camerawork, split screens, and surveillance footage flank Pattinson’s Hansen as he stalks through hallways with the unsettling confidence of a TV host who knows America is about to become addicted to brutal criminal exposure as a means of basement-tier entertainment. That territory is especially apt for Oppenheim, whose earlier nonfiction work — including the HBO docuseries “Ren Faire,” the retirement-community fever dream “Some Kind of Heaven,” and the online sperm-donor documentary “Spermworld” — all examined subjects who performed exaggerated versions of themselves to navigate specific communities and their sometimes outrageous obstacles.
Few young filmmakers are more attuned to the blurry line separating powerful sincerity from the shallow spectacle of contemporary life. The project also arrives with Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg banner among its producers, only deepening the sense that “Primetime” is likely to treat Hansen’s rise through the media less like a straightforward biopic, and more like a queasy fable about shame. Aster has repeatedly explored high-profile humiliation and anonymous crowds who mistake vengeance for catharsis in his own directing work, making the horror filmmaker’s involvement particularly on-theme.
Also produced by Pattinson’s banner Icki Eneo Arlo, “Primetime” hits on an extra timely subject for the indie film studio to explore right now. “To Catch a Predator” arrived before social media fully transformed cancel culture into participatory content, but the broadcast TV series nevertheless helped pioneer a kind of vigilante voyeurism that now dominates huge swaths of the internet. In the wake of the Epstein files, watching strangers who have been accused of pedophilia or child grooming implode for mass consumption is still hugely popular. And revisiting Hansen’s theatrical sting operations in 2026 won’t risk mining nostalgia so much as questioning the defunct true-crime series’ core motives in the first place.
Written by Ajon Singh and co-starring Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, and musician Phoebe Bridgers in one of her highest-profile film performances to date, “Primetime” is currently set to hit theaters later this year. Hansen himself, who remains active through podcasting and streaming investigations, has not publicly commented on Oppenheim’s upcoming movie… yet.
From A24, “Primetime” is expected this fall. Watch the teaser below:
