Primetime’s $2.7 Million Preview Tops Pitt’s Costlier Film

A24’s Primetime took in $2.7 million in Thursday previews, beating Brad Pitt’s $82 million Paramount survival film before either movie’s first full day. Tracking puts the Robert Pattinson Hansen drama at $16 million to $20 million for opening weekend on a $15 million budget. Pitt’s Heart of the Beast, which took in $2 million the same night, is looking at about $20 million.

Chris Hansen watched the picture that night at a Times Square AMC, graded Pattinson a D, and still has his own TruBlu ads running in front of it.

Thursday Night Already Split the A-List Race

The Numbers logged Thursday’s posted preview grosses with Primetime in 2,859 theaters, a $944 house average, and Heart of the Beast behind it despite a wider 3,400-theater plan for Friday. That $2.7 million is 18% of Primetime’s production cost in one night of shows. Pitt’s $2 million is 2.4% of an $82 million budget, a film that cost more than five times as much.

THURSDAY GROSSES BEFORE OPENING DAY

Primetime opened Friday, Sept. 25, after a Venice bow. Lance Oppenheim, the documentarian behind Spermworld and Ren Faire, makes his narrative debut. Pattinson stars and produces. Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Anna Faris, Matthew Maher, and Bokeem Woodbine round out the company around the 2006 Hansen drama now in theaters.

Ajon Singh wrote the script. The story puts Hansen in the year To Catch a Predator tries to hold a bigger slot, and it draws on a 2006 Texas sting that ended with a prosecutor’s death. A24 bills it as inspired by true events. Hansen calls it fiction with his name on the poster.

What Chris Hansen Said After Watching Primetime

Hansen spent August fighting the movie without seeing it. He walked out of an Aug. 20 screening at A24’s Manhattan offices after refusing to sign a nondisclosure deal he said would have given up rights to his name, image, and brand. A24 has not laid out that paperwork in public. He has talked with lawyers and has not filed a suit.

On Thursday he bought a ticket like anyone else. In a clip shot outside the AMC for his podcast Have a Seat With Chris Hansen, he was already done being impressed.

It was so detached from reality or anything I’ve ever experienced then or now doing the investigations. I’m not sure what the point of it was.

Chris Hansen, outside a Times Square AMC, Have a Seat With Chris Hansen

He said most of it is pure fiction with some reality mixed in, and he graded Pattinson’s work a D. One scene stuck in his craw: a shirtless Pattinson at a vanity mirror, rehearsing lines he plans to throw at men on camera. Hansen called that absurd and said it did not happen. He also hated the film’s version of him as a cold father, which he called a cheap shot with no benefit to a viewer.

HANSEN’S VERDICT AFTER THE SCREENING

• The grade: He gave Pattinson a D and said the character was so far from him it was hard to be offended in the usual way.
• The job: He called the movie a hit piece on a series that, in his telling, only exposes people who try to hurt children.
• The slot: He said the film treats To Catch a Predator as a show stuck in the minors, hunting a primetime berth, when the series already ran in primetime.
• The ask: He has wanted the film labeled as fiction rather than inspired by true events, plus a donation to groups that help victims of child predators.

He still told people to go if they like A24 or Pattinson, then to remember they are watching a fictional portrayal of him, his colleagues, and the work. He also said the only part he liked was the TruBlu commercial that plays before the feature. That is not a joke he wandered into. His company bought preshow time in the same houses.

pic.twitter.com/lC6Xxac6MH

— Chris Hansen (@chrishansen) September 25, 2026

The louder argument around that clip is not about the $2.7 million. It is about who is using whom. Some viewers treat Primetime as a smear of a man who still runs stings. Others watch Hansen sell TruBlu in the preshow, grade the movie on his own podcast, and shop a documentary about his career, and see the same performance the film is selling. He is the loser who still has a booth in the lobby.

Paramount’s $82 Million Bet Needs the Grown-Ups

Heart of the Beast is the expensive adult movie in this pile. David Ayer directs Brad Pitt as James Belmont, a Special Forces veteran stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness with his combat dog Odin after a plane crash. J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe co-star. New Zealand stood in for Alaska. Uber, a mountain-rescue dog, plays Odin.

Pitt has said the script moved him enough that he slipped out of the kitchen onto the back deck and wept. Ayer had him hold his breath, swim into a sunken aircraft, and play the scene on camera instead of handing it to a double. Simmons has called the film a love story about what two partners will do for each other. Reviewers have been kind. Thursday buyers were fewer than the ones who showed up for Pattinson in a cheap suit.

Paramount, under David Ellison since 2025, has pulled back on marketing spend. The hope is that older audiences, who often skip opening night, keep coming, and that word of mouth does work the ads are not doing. On an $82 million production cost, a $2 million preview and a weekend near $20 million leave a long rest of the run. Primetime can clear its $15 million negative if it lands in the $16 million to $20 million band. The two movies are not in the same business, even if the posters both sell a famous man in trouble.

A24 Closed Summer Ahead of Paramount and Warner

Primetime is not a freak weekend for the indie. It is the next cheap swing after a summer in which A24 outgrossed two majors.

A24’S SUMMER AGAINST THE MAJORS

• A24: $237 million in summer ticket sales, fourth among distributors.
• Paramount: $192 million, $45 million behind A24.
• Warner Bros.: $165 million, $72 million behind A24.
• Backrooms: $10 million to make, $81.4 million in its domestic opening, $197.5 million domestic, and $400 million worldwide, passing Marty Supreme’s $192 million as A24’s high.

Universal led the season at $1.12 billion. Sony took in $978.8 million. Disney took in $664 million. Kane Parsons was 20 when Backrooms opened, the youngest filmmaker with a No. 1 film, and the movie did the thing Primetime is trying to do on a smaller, nastier scale: spend little, get people into seats, let the internet do the rest. Trailers and clips for the Hansen movie have been circulating for weeks. Thursday suggests some of that traffic bought tickets.

A Reboot and a Re-Release Still Lead the Board

Neither new A-list title is on track to beat the movies that already own the multiplex. Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, a Sony and Constantin reboot, opened at $60 million, a high for the games series and for Cregger. It added $3.31 million on Thursday from 3,684 theaters, down 27% from Wednesday, and stood at $80.2 million through seven days. Tracking for its second weekend is $24 million to $26 million.

Avengers: Endgame Encore did $3.8 million in Thursday previews, more than Primetime and Heart of the Beast combined. Disney and Marvel brought the 2019 film back with extra scenes as a warmup for Avengers: Doomsday in December, with Anthony and Joe Russo again on the credits. Tracking is $25 million to $28 million, a wild figure for a seven-year-old movie. DreamWorks and Universal’s Forgotten Island took in $1.48 million in previews and sits in the family lane the others do not share.

So the actor-versus-actor frame is a sideshow. The weekend’s winners are a video-game property on week two and a Marvel encore. A24 is winning the only fight it priced itself to win, cost versus cash. Paramount is running an $82 million prestige survival film into that wall with a lighter ad load and a bet on grown-ups who show up late.

The Hansen Cameo That Became a Wide Release

Oppenheim has now told the origin story in public, and it is smaller than the legal noise. In March 2024 his wife, Abbey, paid the Cameo that started the movie. Hansen congratulated him on Spermworld, told him to have a seat, and pitched the shows on TruBlu. Oppenheim has called it the most confounding present he had ever received, and has said Primetime may be the first feature inspired by a Cameo. He put the clip on a phone and showed it to Pattinson at the end of a meeting about a documentary. Pattinson already knew the old Dateline segments from his first years in the States around Twilight.

FROM A CAMEO TO OPENING NIGHT

1. 2004 to 2007: Hansen hosts To Catch a Predator, the Dateline hidden-camera stings that made “have a seat” a punchline.
2. March 2024: Abbey Oppenheim buys the $30 Hansen Cameo. Weeks later Pattinson sees it, then flags a script then titled To Catch a Predator.
3. Aug. 20, 2026: Hansen leaves A24’s Manhattan offices without watching, after a fight over the screening agreement.
4. Sept. 24, 2026: He watches at a Times Square AMC. Primetime does $2.7 million in previews. Heart of the Beast does $2 million.
5. Sept. 25, 2026: The movie opens wide. Hansen posts his reaction, and Oppenheim publishes his Cameo letter on A24’s site.

Hansen has said the commercial value of his name is why they kept it. Oppenheim has described the film, through a mutual friend Hansen cited, as a love letter that gets weird in the telling. Hansen’s reply was that if this is a love letter, he would hate to get a poison-pen letter from this director. Pattinson is the one in the middle, doing a voice and a posture the internet already knows how to mock, on a budget that does not need the whole country to show up.

Pattinson Enters a Crowded Awards Field

Pattinson has been getting some of the strongest notices of his career for this one, in a year that already sent him through The Drama with Zendaya and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with Matt Damon. The Odyssey is still in theaters, at $612.8 million domestic through Thursday. He is also shooting The Batman: Part II, with Dune: Part Three due Dec. 18. Primetime is the mean little movie in that stack.

The lead-actor lane is already packed with Damon in The Odyssey, John Malkovich in Wild Horse Nine, Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary, and John Turturro in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. A $16 million to $20 million opening would not lock a nomination. It would keep the performance in the room, which is all a $15 million A24 title can ask in a weekend owned by Resident Evil and a Marvel encore.

Hansen is still in that room too. His face is on the TruBlu spot before the feature. His voice is on the podcast attacking the feature. His name is what the $2.7 million bought. He told people to make up their own minds, then went back to the work he says the movie got wrong, while Pattinson’s version of him kept selling seats at a price Paramount is not beating.