In A24’s new film Primetime, Robert Pattinson will be playing Hansen following the creation, rise, and height of the show, completely taking after his voice. In a year full of Pattinson, from The Drama to Dune: Part III, Primetime is gearing up to be one of his greatest performances yet.
Following the release of the film’s trailer, I went back to rewatch clips of the original show on YouTube, the resemblance to Hansen so uncanny and the voice identical, to see if time and age have given me a different look on it.
Truth is, I never saw an entire episode growing up (I probably wasn’t allowed to), yet everyone around me seemed to be familiar with Hansen and the show, which was often thrown around in conversations about online safety and "stranger danger." Running from 2004-2007, "To Catch a Predator" was an immensely popular yet controversial show, legally speaking, and just with it being used as mere entertainment rather than true crime reporting. The show worked due to the effect of sensationalism -- the "television history" that occurred on the show was built on the public humiliation of online predators on national television instead of actually carrying out thorough investigations.
Throughout the show’s run, it proved to captivate American audiences so much that it landed the primetime spot of 9:00pm on national network NBC. The show’s premise relied on a collaboration with Perverted Justice, an organization that focused on protecting underage kids from predatory adults chatting online. Adults from this group were setting up profiles online posing as minors ranging from 12-15 years old and waiting to be approached by adults (to get around entrapment laws). Here’s where things get tricky -- by law, what these men were being charged for via the show was attempted or online solicitation of a minor. Therefore, just through participating in an inappropriate conversation online with someone they believed to be a minor and arranging a meeting, they’ve incriminated themselves enough to be prosecuted. But that wouldn’t make for good TV, would it…?
With entertainment and spectacle at the core of the show, it was the sting operations that kept audiences engaged, impatiently waiting for the "predator" to interact with the decoy (often college theater students) acting as young teenagers only to then be met with Chris Hansen’s wrath and interrogation. The sting operations consisted of the adult showing up to the house, expecting to meet with the "13-year-old kid" they’ve been chatting with but instead being questioned by Hansen, often denying their intention for being there and calling the chat interactions friendly and "a joke". "But, you see how this looks, right?" Hansen would say as the men denied any real licentious intentions while the online conversations said otherwise. As men left the sting house, police would be waiting outside to take them into custody.
This became an issue because police procedures started being orchestrated by Hansen and NBC producers in order to make the best TV possible. Time constraints and other factors played a role in trying to get content they needed, which made operations risky and sloppy. Because of this, a lot of cases ended up getting dismissed due to poor handling, everything getting thrown out because of the show’s approach, and recklessness which then led to the show’s cancellation. Therefore, it raises the question of how much of the show was actually geared towards preventing and protecting children from abusers and how much of it was just an addition to the true crime phenomenon in entertainment.
The fight between Hansen and predators is still ongoing, with many of them well aware of Hansen and the implications of getting caught on camera, but he is now operating independently and acting as a kind of vigilante. "Takedown with Chris Hansen" for TruBlu is a YouTube subscription-based series where he keeps confronting predators and exposing them to the rest of the world. With powerhouse performances and a story proven to captivate American audiences, it has me wondering if the film will be a huge hit or miss on the whole situation.
Set to release on September 25, 2026 and directed by Lance Oppenheim, Primetime will follow the rise and making of the NBC show through a criminal psychothriller lens and will feature Merritt Wever as NBC producer Lynn Keller and Phoebe Bridgers in her big screen acting debut. Bound to be dramatized, I’m intrigued to see how far they’ll go in the film and in what light they’ll paint Chris Hansen, as a journalist but also a human being. When it comes to a "greater good," I think that the show brought attention to a much larger issue and exposed the way these men went about the world. However, it’s clear that greed and ratings were prioritized over any sort of justice brought to real victims.
