Chris Hansen still hasn’t decided if he’s pursuing legal action against “Primetime,” A24’s Robert Pattinson-led dramatization of his life and “To Catch a Predator.”
“People are looking at it,” the “Dateline” journalist told media personality Dan Abrams on “The Dan Abrams Show” Wednesday. “I don’t know. You know, one guy told me … somebody who’s very, very good at all this and very entrenched in entertainment law, he said, ‘You know, you can do that, and you probably have a decent case. How much time do you want to spend doing it?’”
Questions about Hansen’s response to the film directed by Lance Oppenheim, which fictionalizes the making of “To Catch a Predator” and stars Pattinson as Hansen, have swirled since the first full trailer dropped in early August. The footage teases a dark tone, with Pattinson portraying the journalist as a punisher and ratings-chasing opportunist.
The trailer has also picked up 43 million views on A24’s YouTube channel, placing it just behind “Backrooms” as the studio’s most-watched trailer of all time. You can watch it below.
Written by Ajon Singh, “Primetime” adapts Luke Dittrich’s Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” which tells the story of a “To Catch a Predator” sting that ended with an assistant district attorney dying by suicide after a SWAT team entered his house. (Traditionally, “To Catch a Predator” lured predators to trap houses for their stings, but they went to Bill Conradt’s after he stopped responding to messages).
Hansen said he’s been warned that coming out too strongly against “Primetime” would allow the studio to market it as “the movie Chris Hansen doesn’t want you to see,” while “In reality, it’s the movie Chris Hansen hasn’t seen yet.” You can watch the full interview below.
The “To Catch a Predator” host described the “Primetime” team as “sneaky and disingenuous,” repeating claims that he recently made that A24 blocked him from seeing the film unless he would “sign away my rights to my name, image and brand, essentially,” as he told Jesse Watters, in an NDA sent prior to the screening.
A source with knowledge told TheWrap that Hansen was asked to sign a standard NDA a week in advance, which all preview audiences are required to sign to watch an unreleased film. TheWrap has come to understand that this NDA was meant to prevent spoilers and protect the studio’s IP, and that Hansen was not asked to “sign away” the rights to his name, image and brand. Hansen, however, asserts that David Osit, who directed the documentary “Predators” about Hansen and shows like “To Catch a Predator,” saw the film without signing such an NDA.
“Of course, the headline is, ‘Chris Hansen is at war with A24.’ No,” Hansen told Abrams. “I just want to see the movie without having to sign any of my, you know, remedies away potentially.”
From what Hansen has seen, he’s noted a number of inconsistencies from what actually happened. Hansen called Pattinson “a gifted actor, obviously,” but noted that he’s “darkened up and almost vampirish, and the conversations you heard in the trailer never took place in real life. And I was there.” Hansen pointed to a number of specific moments in the trailer that were “not reflective of reality,” such as Pattinson’s character suggesting that what he does to the predators is “a little worse” than “bleeding” them, and former CNN president Jeff Zucker (who plays himself in the film) saying, “I don’t really like your show, but America loves it.”
He also pointed out that A24 didn’t reach out to him until the day before the first teaser released in May.
“There are a number of issues here. One is ethical. If you’re going to use somebody’s name, or the name of their colleagues, the name of potentially of family members who had nothing to do with this, and you’re doing it because you have this dark Hollywood vision of your creativity, and you’re going to take a real story and flesh it out and make it fiction, why then do you have to use my real name? You could’ve done the same movie without it, and the reason why they used it is because it has commercial value.”
He added: “So it feels very exploitive to me.”
A representative for A24 declined to comment on Hasen’s latest remarks. “Primetime” hits theaters Sept. 25.
