Well, let’s just go ahead and say that we didn’t have this on our 2026 bingo card. That headline is completely and totally accurate: The one and only Robert Pattinson will be playing Dateline NBC investigative journalist and host Chris Hansen, famed for creating the “To Catch a Predator” segment, in Primetime, the first narrative feature directed by acclaimed documentarian Noah Oppenheim. If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you watched Ren Faire on HBO, which he created and directed, or Some Kind of Paradise, his crazy feature documentary about the Villages in Florida.
Honestly, though: imagine if you didn’t click on this post and just walked into Backrooms this weekend, with no knowledge that you were about to get hit with the teaser for what’s sure to be one of the most talked-about films released this year. Alas, we live in a world where you just have to have this shit out online unless you’re trying to con Marvel fans into seeing Avatar three more times than they would have, so A24 dropped a teaser for the project earlier on Wednesday. Good lord, though.
Peep it:
Here’s a brief — and we mean brief — synopsis for Primetime straight from A24:
“In 2006, ‘To Catch a Predator’ host Chris Hansen sets out to make television history.”
If you’d like more information about what we think this movie is about, we’d like to point you to an incredibly well-researched Esquire article from about 17 years ago, one detailing the events that led NBC to pump the brakes on Hansen’s franchise and career as a television journalist and led him into the bizarre section of the internet that he currently occupies. Or watch David Osit’s incredible documentary Predators, which is currently streaming on Paramount+ and is well worth the praise it received from all corners when it released last year.
Anyhow, Primetime will hit theaters sometime in 2026 — there’s no firm date yet, but we imagine A24 wanted to get this shit out the door given how Backdoors is tracking. And why wouldn’t they?