Is Chris Hansen a pedophile-hunting hero or a great American villain?

By David Mack, CNN

(CNN) — “Primetime,” the new movie starring Robert Pattinson as “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen, kicks off in 2006 — an era recreated on screen via puka shell necklaces and Fergie songs. Hansen and his show about uncovering pedophiles have become a cultural juggernaut. He’s been celebrated on Oprah Winfrey’s program, and played himself on “30 Rock” and in a Conan O’Brien Emmys skit. Later, he even appeared in an episode of “The Simpsons.”

Within a year, the show would be over and a man would be dead.

“Primetime” hits US theaters this week, but controversy has long been brewing. The real Hansen has made his outrage clear about what he’s described as “a complete work of fiction attached to a real name.” He’s complained that he was not consulted about the film, and that he was also barred from seeing it in previews without first signing a non-disclosure agreement. Using particularly pointed language given the subject matter at hand, Hansen accused the filmmakers of acting in a “exploitative or predatory manner” and being “sneaky” and “disingenuous” to produce an “insult” that is “essentially a horror film.”

He’s probably right to be upset. In the movie, Hansen is portrayed as an egomaniac philanderer whose delusions become so all-consuming and chaotic that they eventually become fatal. “At the end of the day, a man must be held accountable for the decisions that he makes. Don’t you agree?” Pattinson’s Hansen says in the film’s opening sequence to an ex-marine (Tony Revolori) ensnared in one of the show’s televised traps for men seeking sex with minors. That’s a question “Primetime” wants audiences to grapple with.

At its core, “Primetime” is a movie interested in the ethical quandaries and real-world implications of mixing entertainment and journalism. As the show-within-the-movie becomes increasingly popular with viewers, we watch as pressure rises to make each episode more compelling — whatever the cost.

But as a Hollywood production, “Primetime” is itself also out to entertain at the expense of sticking strictly to truth. Although based on a 2007 Esquire article, it fictionalizes characters, plays with timelines (bringing forward a 2011 sex scandal involving Hansen that was covered by the National Enquirer) and ascribes fantastical motivations, all to up the dramatic stakes. And while creative artists don’t face the same ethical responsibilities as journalists, Hansen’s discomfort is somewhat understandable — even to the filmmakers themselves. “I think in a lot of ways we’ve tried to make him a complicated superhero, and I think before he forms judgments, I hope he watches the movie and he sees that we started as fans of his,” screenwriter Ajon Singh said.

A trap is set

“To Catch a Predator” began as a recurring segment in 2004 on NBC’s “Dateline” news program on which Hansen was an Emmy-winning correspondent. Partnering with a group called Perverted Justice, whose members would trawl web forums posing as minors, the show would hire young-looking adult actors to pose as children, lure men to a home filled with hidden cameras and then spring Hansen on them. Cops waiting outside would then arrest them on charges of soliciting minors.

Hansen has maintained that his journalistic objective was to try to interview the men in order to understand their motives, but there was an undeniable, if also dark, schadenfreude in watching the titular predators be exposed to millions. “In that moment,” ethnographer Mark de Rond said in “Predators,” a 2025 documentary about the show, “what you’re seeing is effectively someone’s life end, and they realize it.”

Even after almost two decades since it ended, the show continues to enjoy many fans, but relatives of some of the men have spoken out against it. “The entertainment industry cannot act as police, judge, jury, executioner,” said Patricia Conradt when she sued NBC over the death of her brother Bill Conradt (played in the film by Alex Winter). (Her lawsuit was settled in 2008.)

As the movie begins, the “Primetime” version of Hansen seems consumed by his fame to an unhealthy degree. He enjoys being recognized on airplanes, dropping his name when it might get him better service and waking up his young boys to show them his show, which he’s thrilled will be taking on a counterprogramming timeslot opposite ABC hit “Lost.” He also seems to be nursing a chip on his shoulder when it comes to a one-sided rivalry with Stone Phillips (Bill Heck), a more serious newsman who gets coveted assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This guy thinks he’s f*cking Chris Wallace,” one sound engineer says mockingly of Hansen to colleagues during a funny, extended moment in which Hansen lays down repeated tracks of narration using his highly affected newsreader voice.

According to “Primetime” director Lance Oppenheim, it was this public image that Hansen had cultivated which first drew him to the idea of a movie about the host. When Oppenheim’s wife purchased him a Cameo from Hansen to celebrate the release of his 2024 documentary “Spermworld,” Oppenheim marveled at the character he seemed to still be playing. “He’s almost become this hyper performative, self-aware version of himself, almost like he’s fully cognizant of the cultural mythology he’s cultivated, and he’s seizing on it,” Oppenheim said.

“We liked the idea, almost the challenge, of creating a media collage of every Chris Hansen that’s ever existed — the characters, the personas, the versions of himself that he himself has put out into the world,” Oppenheim said.

“A real, living person is not a narrative device”

Hansen is not the first public figure to take issue with their depiction in a work that takes dramatic license. In 2018, Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland lost a court battle over the way in which Ryan Murphy portrayed her as a “petty gossip” in his drama “Feud,” in which she was played by Catherine Zeta Jones. More recently, the actor Daryl Hannah penned a New York Times piece in March complaining that the FX series “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” depicted an “irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate” version of her (played by Dree Hemingway) that was inaccurate and distressing. “Storytelling requires tension. It often requires an obstacle. But a real, living person is not a narrative device,” Hannah wrote.

Oppenheim, the director, said he viewed this film in concert with some of his other works — including his upcoming documentary with Nathan Fielder on disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything” — as part of what he describes as a “docufantasia” genre. This style embraces a “more operatic, heightened version” of reality to better explore the highs and lowers of human experience, he said.

The director believes this same mix of reality and artificiality could seen in “To Catch a Predator” itself. “It felt like you were in sort of a house of mirrors, a funhouse, and a circus that was led by this ringleader who Chris Hansen,” Oppenheim said. “I liked that we could occupy that same space, that we could try and make something that was than stranger than fiction with this film.”

Hansen still has not seen the film, but has said he plans to attend a screening when it opens and then share his thoughts on one of his podcasts and on YouTube. (Requests for an interview sent to Hansen’s agent and TruBlu, his true-crime streaming platform where he still films a version of “To Catch a Predator,” were not returned.) But both Singh and Oppenheim insist their film makes no intentional value judgments about Hansen or his show’s legacy. Their main goal, they insisted, was to explore Hansen as a character and try — as he did with the men on his show — to understand how he thinks.

“You’re seeing Chris Hansen go from man to meme. He goes from person to persona, and you see how spiritually, when you’re in communion with punishing someone publicly on the world stage, it affects you,” Oppenheim said. “We wanted to sort of trace what those effects are.”

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