Chris Hansen isn’t thrilled about A24’s upcoming film, Primetime, and he’s floating the idea of doing something about it. “You could have done the same movie without it,” he says of the studio’s decision to use his real name in the project, in which Robert Pattinson plays him. “The reason why they used it is because it has commercial value. So it feels very exploitative to me.”
According to Hansen, a lawyer told him he’d “probably have a decent case” against A24.
He first raised the legal question during an August 26 appearance on Dan Abrams’ SiriusXM podcast — and, by his own account, he still hasn’t watched the film.
Pattinson, 40, takes on the role in a movie dramatized from Hansen’s 2004 to 2007 stint hosting the Dateline NBC segment To Catch a Predator, drawing in part on a 2007 Esquire article.
Hansen, 66, maintains that no one ever consulted him.
For him, it all comes back to the name. “If you’re going to use somebody’s name and the name of their colleagues,” he said, “why, then, do you have to use my real name? You could have done the same movie without it, and the reason why they used it is because it has commercial value. So it feels very exploitative to me.”
Hansen says he passed on an early screening after A24 asked him “to sign away my rights to my name, image and brand, essentially.” A source close to the film pushed back to Rolling Stone, describing it as the standard NDA every preview audience signs to keep spoilers under wraps — and insisting Hansen wasn’t asked to surrender any rights.
By Hansen’s timeline, A24 didn’t reach out until the day before the first trailer landed, even though the project had been in motion since May 27. Primetime premieres at the Venice Film Festival on September 5 before opening in theaters September 25.
