A Portrait He Never Agreed To
Chris Hansen has never been short of enemies — but he may not have anticipated that his most formidable opponent would be a critically discussed A24 film starring one of Hollywood's biggest stars. With Primetime set for a theatrical release on 25 September, the former Dateline NBC host is threatening legal action against the film's producers, furious that they used his name and built a character around him without ever approaching him for input.
"If you're fictionalising so much, why use real names?" Hansen, 67, said. "It feels very exploitative to me. It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me that they would do this and not even say, 'This is what we're doing.'"
Robert Pattinson, fresh from donning the cape in The Batman, portrays Hansen in the film, which is described as "inspired by true events" and charts the rise and fall of To Catch a Predator, the hidden-camera sting series that ran on Dateline NBC from 2004 to 2007.
What the Film Actually Shows
If Hansen does eventually sit down to watch Primetime, he will find little comfort on screen. Directed by Lance Oppenheim, the film depicts its version of Hansen not as a crusading journalist but as something far darker — a snarling, ruthlessly ambitious narcissist described by one reviewer as "the Gollum of network news," with To Catch a Predator as his precious.
Pattinson's Hansen is a man consumed by envy of his Dateline colleague Stone Phillips, hungry for primetime glory at any cost, and willing to push the production to reckless extremes to maintain its ratings. The film culminates in the suicide of one of the programme's targets — an episode that, in real life, led to the show's cancellation — and frames the entire enterprise as ethically catastrophic.
"We're cleansing the world of an ancient evil," Pattinson's character declares with the quiet ferocity of a tiger — a line that captures the film's unsettling portrayal of messianic self-belief.
Hansen has blasted the trailer as "overly dramatic" and "dark," insisting: "There are a lot of negative things in there that just aren't true." The film runs 110 minutes, is rated R for disturbing sexual material, graphic nudity, some violent content and language, and opens in cinemas on 25 September.
The Legal Threat — and the Dilemma
Hansen says he has already sought advice from an entertainment lawyer, who gave him cautious encouragement. "Somebody who's very, very good at all this and very entrenched in entertainment law," Hansen said, "he said, 'You know, you can do that, and you probably have a decent case.'"
But Hansen openly acknowledges the bind he finds himself in: pursuing legal action could simply generate more publicity for a film he despises. It is a classic tabloid paradox — the more loudly he objects, the more tickets may be sold.
The Man Behind the Mission
The irony of Hansen's outrage is not lost on those who have followed his career. The Emmy-winning host built his reputation exposing the shameful secrets of others, yet his own private life later became tabloid fodder. In 2011, RadarOnline.com exclusively revealed that Hansen had exchanged explicit text messages with a then-33-year-old TV reporter named Kristyn Caddell while married. He initially denied the affair before the texts provided proof of their four-month relationship. NBC dropped him in 2013.
Further controversies followed. Hansen was later reported to have strayed on both his wife and his mistress with a Hollywood stripper. In 2019 he was arrested for allegedly using rubber cheques to pay a Connecticut vendor nearly $13,000 for promotional materials, though those charges were later dropped. He has since hosted a number of true crime shows.
"There are a lot of negative things in there that just aren't true," Hansen insists of the film — though its producers have yet to specify which elements they regard as fiction and which as fair comment.
Whether or not a lawsuit materialises, Primetime arrives in cinemas carrying the kind of real-world controversy that money cannot buy. For Hansen, that may be the bitterest cut of all.
