A24 has released the official trailer for Primetime, a drama inspired by Chris Hansen's To Catch a Predator — the recurring Dateline NBC sting-operation segments that ran from 2004 to 2007 and turned suspected online predators into primetime television. Robert Pattinson plays Hansen, trading blockbuster vampires for a khaki-suited investigative host. The trailer arrived on A24's YouTube channel on 6 August, tagged "Inspired by true events" and stamped with a theatrical release date of 25 September (The Hollywood Reporter; A24).

The film is directed by Lance Oppenheim, a documentarian making the jump to scripted feature work. The cast around Pattinson includes Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, and Bokeem Woodbine (The Hollywood Reporter).

One of the trailer's most talked-about moments doesn't come from any of those actors. Former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker appears as himself, telling Pattinson's Hansen: "I don't really like your show, but America loves it. So I'm going to move you to primetime." It is the line that gives the film its title — and a window into how a niche investigative segment became a national phenomenon (The Hollywood Reporter).

To Catch a Predator worked a simple formula. Working with the watchdog group Perverted Justice, Dateline NBC set up sting houses where adults arrived expecting to meet minors they had chatted with online. Hansen would emerge, clipboard in hand, and read their own messages back to them on camera. The segments drew huge ratings and fierce criticism in equal measure, and the franchise ended its network run in 2007.

For Pattinson, Primetime adds another left-field project to a post-Twilight career built on unexpected choices — from the brooding The Batman (2022) to Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17 (2025). For Oppenheim, whose documentaries Some Kind of Heaven (2020) and Spermworld (2024) earned festival acclaim, the film marks a shift from observing reality to dramatising it.

A24's trailer closes with four words: "Only in theaters September 25." The independent studio, which confirmed the date on its official film page, is positioning Primetime for an autumn corridor where adult-skewing dramas tend to find their audience (A24; YouTube).

What makes the project stand out is the collision of tones it promises. A documentary-trained director, a former studio chief playing himself, a musician crossing into acting, and one of Hollywood's most unpredictable leading men — all trained on a television experiment that blurred the line between journalism and entertainment. Whether Primetime leans into satire, drama, or something harder to categorise will become clearer as the 25 September release approaches.