Chris Hansen Says He’s Weighing Legal Action Over Robert Pattinson’s New Movie
· Thought Catalog
Updated 3 minutes ago, August 28, 2026
Chris Hansen is considering legal action over the upcoming A24 movie in which Robert Pattinson portrays him, and he says a lawyer has told him he might have a case.
Hansen said an attorney told him he’d “probably have a decent case” against A24 over ‘Primetime’, the film in which Pattinson plays him. He raised the idea of suing on Dan Abrams’ SiriusXM podcast on August 26, adding that he still hasn’t seen the movie.
Pattinson, 40, plays Hansen in the film, which is dramatized from Hansen’s 2004 to 2007 run hosting the Dateline NBC segment To Catch a Predator and based partly on a 2007 Esquire article. Hansen, 66, says he was never consulted.
His main objection is the use of his 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 turned down 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 told Rolling Stone that was a standard NDA all preview audiences sign to prevent spoilers, and that Hansen was not asked to give up any rights.
Hansen also says A24 first approached him only the day before the first trailer dropped, even though the project had been moving since May 27. Primetime premieres at the Venice Film Festival on September 5 and hits theaters September 25.
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