The heavily stylised film casts Pattinson as a kooky, enthusiastic Hansen on the brink of having it all: king of network television and a kind of Batman-esque saviour of children preyed on by local predators. Those predators are hunted down by Perverted-Justice, a clan of incel-adjacent gamer types who spend their nights online trying to lure in nearby villains.

The formula is simple. The volunteers find the men, then invite them to a decoy house where an actor awaits. Right as any illegal act is about to strike, out comes Hansen from the low-stakes, faux stage set, script in hand, reading aloud all the filthy messages the men had sent. Then comes the dramatic arrest.

Pattinson was originally only meant to produce. Oppenheim reportedly won him over to the lead by sending 200 cans of Zyn nicotine pouches, with a note addressed to “Chris Han-Zyn”. The director insists he isn’t out to make a villain of his subject. “To me, he’s a hero, a complicated hero, like Odysseus,” he told Variety.

Alongside Pattinson is Phoebe Bridgers, in her acting debut, as the original decoy. She is soon overtaken by Skyler Gisondo, who gives an incredible performance as “Decoy Dan”, an aspiring actor who stumbles into the role without knowing everything it entails. And when things get tough, in flies the show’s producer, played by Merritt Wever, ready to drug, holler and scream wherever necessary to keep those ratings flowing.

The film’s real question, Oppenheim told W magazine: “How do you maintain a sense of self when you’re doing this dark work…”

When Primetime premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival in September, it earned a seven-minute standing ovation. Even so, I barely heard a good word about it on the Lido, and the trade reviews landed squarely at good-not-great. Bridgers’ sheer grey Alexander McQueen gown was, to most of us, more thrilling than the film.

And yet in Australia, where it opened on 29 October and debuted at No. 1 at the box office with $1.3 million, the response has been met with far more gasps of excitement. There’s praise for Pattinson’s performance, and for the heavily aesthetic, thoughtful nuance of cinematographer David Bolen’s work. Bolen shot the film in a boxy 4:3 frame, largely on eight vintage Panasonic DVX100B camcorders, pushing the image to an exposure index of 6400 and printing it to 16mm film for that grubby, grain-soaked mid-2000s texture.

It’s a film of modest means by Hollywood standards. Made for a reported $15 million, Primetime was shot over roughly seven weeks in New Orleans in early 2025 under the working title Bluefin Tuna, standing in for Florida for tax reasons. Pattinson squeezed it in just before Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, saying that shoot began “literally… a few hours later”. It has since taken close to $50 million worldwide.