Robert Pattinson Plays Chris Hansen in A24’s Primetime Teaser

A24’s teaser for Primetime puts chris hansen back on-screen through Robert Pattinson, who plays the broadcast journalist in a film set in 2006. The trailer arrives as the movie moves from a real TV scandal into a theatrical release this fall, with Pattinson also serving as a producer for the first time on a full feature.

Pattinson’s Hansen turn

“I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and you’re about to be a part of television history,” Pattinson says in the teaser, taking over the line that defined Hansen’s role on To Catch a Predator. That series premiered in 2004 and, by 2006, had become the backdrop for the film’s setting.

Pattinson’s casting matters because the part is tied to a broadcaster whose name is inseparable from one of television’s most controversial formats. Primetime is not just borrowing a familiar face; it is building its story around the period when Hansen and his crew worked with law enforcement and hired decoys to trap and arrest alleged pedophiles.

Lance Oppenheim’s debut

Lance Oppenheim directs Primetime in his narrative feature debut, giving the project a first-time feature filmmaker behind the camera and a major studio-backed star in front of it. The film also marks Pattinson’s first full feature-producing credit, which makes the project part performance role and part production milestone.

The cast extends beyond Pattinson to Merritt Wever and Skyler Gisondo, giving the film more than a one-character hook. That matters for a movie rooted in a specific media era, because the story’s weight depends on more than imitation; it needs an ensemble that can carry the procedural and the fallout.

2006 and Bill Conradt

In 2006, Bill Conradt shot and killed himself as officers and the film crew entered his home, the tragedy that ended the run of the series at the center of the film’s premise. Primetime is set in that same year, so the teaser lands in the most fraught stretch of the source material rather than the cleaner beginning in 2004.

That choice gives the film a narrow lane: it has to hold the line between reenactment and judgment while dealing with a story that already carries a built-in ending. The trailer suggests A24 is treating the subject as a period piece about television, law enforcement, and spectacle — not as a nostalgia play — and that is the sharper way to make this worth watching.

Fall release window

Primetime will open in theaters this fall, which gives A24 a title with a recognizable name, a first-time feature director, and a lead actor making his producing debut on a full-length film. For viewers, the takeaway is simple: this is the first look at a project that is built around one of TV’s most notorious broadcast eras, and the trailer makes clear that Hansen, not a fictional proxy, is the movie’s center of gravity.