It’s been a huge year for Robert Pattinson, who starred opposite Zendaya in Kristoffer Borgli’s twisty pre-wedding thriller The Drama and then landed Best Supporting Actor buzz as the scheming suitor Antinous in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, now the biggest hit of his career at $1.5 billion worldwide. But his most notable role may be in Primetime, which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is earning him the best notices of his career as To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen.
Primetime is the first narrative feature from documentarian Lance Oppenheim. The film is set in 2006, with To Catch a Predator newly bumped to its own primetime slot opposite ABC’s Lost and Hansen chasing bigger targets to hold onto it. Merritt Wever plays Andie Bender, the show’s fictionalized producer, while Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers are its decoys and former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker plays himself.
Critics like the movie and they’re loving Pattinson. Primetime is at 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 76 on Metacritic as of publication. He’s currently inside the top 10 in Gold Derby’s combined Best Actor odds.
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JULY 31: Austin Abrams attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema’s “Weapons” at The United Theater on Broadway on July 31, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
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Nicholas Barber gave it five stars at the BBC and said it’s “sure to be an Oscar contender,” if a controversial one. “This is the best performance yet from the most intriguing actor of his generation,” he writes.
Little White Lies calls it a career high, writing that Pattinson “wears Chris Hansen’s skin like a suit,” down to the shark-eyed stare and the insistence that he’s out to cleanse the world of an ancient evil.
At The Playlist, Marshall Shaffer graded it A- and built his case out of Pattinson’s back catalog of strange line readings — the “drawl” in The Devil All the Time, the “ludicrous mockery” of French in The King, the “hard B on beggars” in The Odyssey. His verdict here: “a new high-water mark,” and the most locked-in performance of its kind since Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.
Damon Wise at Deadline writes that Pattinson may be entering the “Christian Bale period” of his career, but notes the Academy has to actually go for material this dark, and it never went for Nightcrawler. “It’s a stylish, almost Shakespearean meditation on ambition, that applies to online wrong’uns as much as the media — be careful what you wish for.”
Variety‘s Jessica Kiang zeroes in on the voice, calling his take on Hansen’s over-rehearsed on-air delivery “uncanny.” Ryan Lattanzio gave it a B at IndieWire and opens his review by declaring Pattinson “a freaky freak from frame one.”
A handful have reservations, and even they stop to applaud Pattinson. Ben Croll at TheWrap thinks Oppenheim smears Pattinson’s “gonzo” style across every corner of the film until the satire has nothing left to bite with — and then praises Pattinson reacting to a rival journalist’s dig by “cycling through 17 different faces in about two and a half seconds.” “The man is the GOAT, long live the king,” Croll writes. Leslie Felperin at The Hollywood Reporter found the film too incurious to beat last year’s Predators documentary but called Pattinson “equal parts cracked and chilling,” a ratings hunter with a grandiosity complex and a chip on his shoulder about not being Stone Phillips.
Wever is the other name getting serious buzz. Bender, a fictional creation, gets singled out in nearly every review — “phenomenal,” per Screen Daily; a Faye Dunaway in Network comparison from Lattanzio; “blistering,” in Kiang’s words.
Hansen isn’t a fan, and he hasn’t seen it yet. He refused to sign A24’s pre-screening NDA, has questioned Hollywood’s motive for making the film, floated Denis Leary as better casting, and bought ad time in front of screenings to steer audiences toward his own streaming service. Asked about all of it in Venice, Pattinson, who also produced, told The Hollywood Reporter he hopes Hansen likes the movie.
Primetime hits theaters Sept. 25.
