Robert Pattinson stars as Chris Hansen in Primetime, which opened in Polish cinemas on 9 October

Premise and cast

Lance Oppenheim's first fiction feature Primetime returns to NBC's To Catch a Predator, a programme that Polityka's reviewer counts among the most notorious in American television. Hidden cameras and phone wiretaps followed meetings between alleged predators and their "victims", played by adult actors, and host Chris Hansen stepped in at the key moment, followed by police. Polityka notes that publishing the image and personal details of someone caught attempting a crime amounted to passing a sentence before the case reached court, and that in one case the intervention ended in tragedy. The film centres on three characters: Hansen, producer Andie Bender and Dan, an aspiring actor who takes the role of bait. Robert Pattinson plays Hansen, Merritt Wever plays Bender, a fictional figure Polityka says is modelled on real people who worked for NBC, and Skyler Gizondo plays Dan. Pattinson said he had not planned to play Hansen at all, but saw something in him that he found compelling.

I did not plan to play Chris Hansen. I simply saw something magnetic in him. He is the one who inspired many people to take on a difficult subject.

Venice premiere and Polish release

Primetime competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice festival in September, and PAP republished its coverage to mark the Polish release. The film opened in Polish cinemas on Friday, 9 October, and runs 109 minutes as a United States production, according to Polityka. At the Pionier cinema in Szczecin, 24kurier lists screenings on Saturday at 19:00 and Sunday at 17:00. At the press conference for the world premiere, Oppenheim described how his interest in the subject began when he first watched the original programme.

When I watched the original show, I was impressed. Chris Hansen seemed to me an almost mythical figure.

Oppenheim also recounted that his wife ordered a personalised video message through a mobile app, in which Hansen congratulated him on the premiere of one of his documentaries.

Critical reception

Reviews in Polish outlets are mixed, with praise for the lead performance alongside doubts about the film's ambitions. Polityka's reviewer calls Pattinson's performance phenomenal and hypnotising, possibly the best in what the review describes as an already successful year for the actor. naTemat's review argues that the psychological thriller chases greatness but never reaches it, and that fascination with Hansen fades once the closing credits roll. The same review says the film is shot in a classic television format with unstable image quality, with Fergie's London Bridge playing somewhere in the background. It adds that the film uses nostalgia for early-2000s television to test whether audiences can resist the pull of reality shows.

Cultural afterlife

PAP reports that the show was taken off the air in 2008, yet To Catch a Predator took root in pop culture. Catchphrases spoken by Hansen became the basis of many memes, and parodies of the format appeared in South Park. Oppenheim first learned about the phenomenon as a teenager from that series, PAP reports. Polityka adds that the 2025 documentary Drapieżnicy by David Osit revisited the programme's history and was shown in Poland only at festivals. Primetime opens in Polish cinemas from 9 October.