'Primetime' Review: Robert Pattinson Powers A Chilling Media Nightmare
Robert Pattinson plays the Dateline host as the film examines how the sting series turned online confrontations into ratings-driven television.
- On Friday, September 25, 2026, the A24 film Primetime opens in theaters, starring Robert Pattinson as television journalist Chris Hansen. The movie dramatizes the rise and collapse of the NBC series To Catch a Predator.
- Running from 2004 to 2008, the series featured Hansen working with Perverted-Justice to lure suspected predators into sting houses, generating 238 apprehensions, though only 36 resulted in convictions.
- Director Lance Oppenheim explores the show's dark reality through the eyes of Decoy Dan, a struggling actor played by Skyler Gisondo, depicting the production's intense pressure to deliver sensationalist content.
- Following the show's abrupt 2006 cancellation after a subject's suicide, Hansen criticized the film as an "insult," claiming the movie depicts events that did not occur in reality.
- Critics highlight the film's stylistic use of early-2000s aesthetics to mirror the era, though the movie faces scrutiny regarding its ambiguous stance on whether it critiques or exploits trauma.
20 Articles
20 Articles
Primetime Mines Comedy from the Sordid Series To Catch a Predator
Tall, blandly handsome Chris Hansen began as a TV reporter like any other. He cut his teeth on regional stories before hitting the big time when he joined NBC News as a correspondent before becoming a regular contributor to Dateline NBC. So far, so good, but run-of-the-mill reporters don’t find themselves the focus of high-profile feature films, like Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime. No, Hansen was something else. When NBC tapped him as host of Datel…
Primetime: To Catch a Predator’s Lurid and Unsettling Send-Up
“You see how this looks, right?” The new thriller Primetime is a queasy portrait of a deviant sociopath who in the view of director Lance Oppenheim represents a clear and present danger to the public. That sociopath is Chris Hansen. Hansen is a former Dateline NBC personality best known for his 2004-07 series To Catch […]
Review: ‘Primetime’ questions attracting ratings via trauma
If you decide to see Lance Oppenheim’s “Primetime,” it’s important to remember the title as you watch. Yes, this is a biopic of sorts about Chris Hansen and his work on “To Catch a Predator,” but it is more accurately about the quest for fame and using people’s trauma to attract ratings. True crime entertainment […]
'Primetime' Review: Fear and loathing on must-see TV
If the ‘20s are the manifestation of all that’s wrong with the United States, the Aughts were a preview of coming attractions. Things were falling apart, but the center held for another decade and change before the varnish painted over the neoliberal consensus fully wore off, when, in grief and fear, we squandered the opportunities presented to us by a unipolar world in which the US was in charge. Charlatans abounded in a make-believe fantasy of…
Regional Media Movie Review: Sean Kernan Reviews Prime Time - Regional Media News
Friday at the Movies: Sean Kernan Reviews Prime Time Friday at the Movies with Sean returns this week on the Hog Country Radio Network, featuring Regional Media film critic Sean Kernan and his review of Prime Time, starring Robert Pattinson. The film takes audiences behind the [...]
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