Primetime (2026): Robert Pattinson's Chris Hansen Movie, True Story & Reviews

Primetime, A24’s drama about the people behind NBC’s To Catch a Predator, stars Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen and is inspired by true events: it builds to the real 2006 sting in Murphy, Texas, during which a county prosecutor died by suicide as police entered his home. A good deal around that core is invented, and the real Chris Hansen has called the film fiction. It is in US theaters now. We rate it 7 out of 10.

Where can you watch Primetime?

In theaters. Primetime opened wide across the US on Friday 25 September 2026, in more than 2,800 theaters, and it is not streaming yet.

No digital or streaming date has been announced. Under A24’s pay-TV deal, the film will eventually stream on HBO Max in the US.

Who is in the Primetime cast?

Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen and also produced the film. Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers, in her first acting role, lead the supporting cast. Lance Oppenheim, a documentary filmmaker making his first scripted feature, directed from a screenplay by Ajon Singh.

Is Primetime a true story?

Partly. The setting, the show and the Texas sting at its climax are real; many of the people around Hansen, and several of the film’s biggest scenes, are invented. The film’s own billing is “inspired by true events”, and its source is Luke Dittrich’s article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die”, which Esquire ran in its September 2007 issue.

To Catch a Predator started in 2004, as a recurring Dateline NBC segment. Volunteers from a group called Perverted-Justice posed online as children; when a man arranged to meet one, he arrived at a house wired with cameras, where an adult actor playing the child greeted him before Hansen stepped out with the chat logs, and in most stings police arrested him outside. NBC paid Perverted-Justice as consultants. The last new episode aired in December 2007, by which point advertisers had grown wary of the show.

The film compresses those years into one season in 2006 and ends in Murphy, Texas. This section describes real events that the film dramatizes in its final act.

What happened to Bill Conradt in real life?

Louis William “Bill” Conradt Jr., 56, was a senior prosecutor, the head of felony cases for Rockwall County, who had served five terms as district attorney next door in Kaufman County. In early November 2006, To Catch a Predator was running a sting in Murphy, a Dallas suburb, and he had allegedly been exchanging sexually explicit messages online with someone he believed was a 13-year-old boy, who was in fact a Perverted-Justice volunteer. He did not go to the sting house, and he met no one.

On Sunday 5 November 2006, police obtained warrants and went to his home in Terrell, about an hour from Murphy, with a Dateline crew outside. As officers entered the house, he died by suicide. He was never charged with a crime, and in 2007 the Collin County district attorney declined to prosecute any of the men arrested in the Murphy sting, citing questions of jurisdiction and whether the chat logs could be shown to be complete and authentic.

His sister, Patricia Conradt, sued NBC Universal in 2007, seeking $105 million. In February 2008, Judge Denny Chin let key claims go forward, writing that a reasonable jury, if her allegations were proven, “could find that NBC crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement.” It was a ruling on whether the case could proceed, not a finding of fact. NBC settled in June 2008, on undisclosed terms.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland.

What does Primetime change from the real story?

The film treats the record loosely, and its director has described it as a fever dream rather than a biopic. The main differences:

Two things the film keeps from the record: To Catch a Predator did catch a rabbi, in a 2005 sting, and Del Harvey, the name Phoebe Bridgers’ character carries, is the pseudonym of a real Perverted-Justice volunteer who was the show’s first on-camera decoy and later ran trust and safety at Twitter. The doubts the film gives her are not documented.

What has the real Chris Hansen said about Primetime?

He rejects it. Hansen skipped an A24 screening in August after declining to sign an agreement that, he says, would have handed over the use of his name, image and brand; people on A24’s side described it as a standard confidentiality agreement. He then paid for ads promoting his own streaming service, TruBlu, to play in theaters before the film.

He finally saw it on Thursday 24 September, at a screening in New York, and called it bizarre and detached from reality. On his podcast the next day he gave Pattinson’s performance a D, said he was most upset at being shown as a distant father, and called it “absolutely a fictional portrayal of me, of my colleagues, of the series.”

Pattinson, at the film’s Venice press conference, said he hoped Hansen would take it as a compliment. Oppenheim has said the project began with a 2024 Cameo video from Hansen that his wife gave him as a gift.

Where is Chris Hansen now?

Still doing the same kind of work, on his own platforms. In 2013 NBC declined to renew his contract, ending a 20-year run at the network. He revived the sting format as Hansen vs. Predator, first through a 2015 Kickstarter and then as a segment of Crime Watch Daily, which he hosted from 2016 to 2018. In 2022 he co-founded TruBlu, a true-crime streaming service, where his series Takedown with Chris Hansen runs.

Is Primetime good?

Yes, mostly because of Robert Pattinson. It is a stylish, unsettling film that is at its best when it sticks close to the show and its machinery, and at its weakest in the subplots it invents to explain Hansen. We give it 7 out of 10.

Pattinson is the reason to see it. He has Hansen’s voice, but the rest is interpretation rather than impression: a man who hunts predators on camera and becomes something predatory himself, all fixed smile and appetite. It is one of the most committed performances of his career. The cost is that the film makes Hansen monstrous from almost the first frame, so there is less of a journey than the story promises.

Skyler Gisondo is its conscience. As the young actor paid to play the children the men come to meet, he carries the film’s moral weight, and his gradual realization of what he is part of is the most human thread in it. Merritt Wever is sharp as the producer who sees every catastrophe as usable footage, and Phoebe Bridgers is assured in a small role.

The look is the boldest thing about it. Oppenheim shoots in a boxy frame on period video formats, so the film looks like the show it is about, with the grain and the harsh light of mid-2000s television. That makes the stings feel uncomfortably real, and it is also where the film’s central question lives: whether it is critiquing the show’s voyeurism or reproducing it. It does both, and the uneasiness is partly the point.

The inventions are where it sags. The affair subplot, moved about five years earlier, and the demonic imagery from India are the weakest material in the film, and they slow the second half. The Texas finale is gripping as filmmaking, but it stages a real man’s death as the climax of a thriller, which puts it uncomfortably close to the spectacle it is questioning.

Critics are more enthusiastic than not. As of 26 September 2026, 87% of the 166 reviews counted by Rotten Tomatoes were positive, with an average rating of 7.4 out of 10, and it is certified fresh; Metacritic’s score was 67 out of 100 from 44 critics, which it rates generally favorable. For a fuller account of the real events, with the participants themselves, the 2025 documentary Predators covers the same ground.