Overview
- Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim, premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a lengthy standing ovation and opened in German cinemas on 24 September 2026.
- Critics broadly praised Robert Pattinson’s performance and highlighted the film’s deliberate moral ambiguity and its use of reenactments and contrasting visual styles to evoke voyeurism.
- The movie dramatizes the NBC-era sting series To Catch a Predator and revisits the Texas episode tied to Bill Conradt that helped end the original show.
- The real Chris Hansen publicly said he was not consulted and called the portrayal exaggerated, and reports say he bought pre-screening ad spots in U.S. cinemas to promote his own streaming platform rather than endorse the film.
- By blurring reenactment and dramatization, Primetime renews questions about the ethics of sting operations, public shaming and how media and platforms profit from spectacle.