To Catch A Predator Host Chris Hansen Finds Robert Pattinson's Primetime "Very Exploitative"

Chris Hansen is still mulling whether he is going to pursue legal action against Primetime, A24’s Robert Pattinson-led dramatization of his life and the controversial show that brought him fame, To Catch a Predator.

Primetime is set to have a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month. The Lance Oppenheim directorial is competing for the Golden Lion.

Chris Hansen's Unease Over Primetime

“People are looking at it,” Hansen confessed 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?’”

Hansen elaborated, “And the thought process here is that, if you protest it too much, do they turn it into a promotional situation where, ‘this is the movie Chris Hansen doesn’t want you to see.’ Well, in reality, it’s the movie Chris Hansen hasn’t even seen yet, so it’s a hard question to answer.” The trailer has racked up 43 million views on A24’s YouTube channel, arrogating it just behind Backrooms as the studio’s most-watched trailer of all time.

“It feels very exploitive to me,” insisted Hansen. “It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me that they would do this and not even say, ‘This is what we’re doing.'”

Hansen has also bought preshow advertising on every screen showing the upcoming A24 release. In the spot, he guides audiences to TruBlu, his streaming network devoted to the same kind of predator investigations that made him famous. Reportedly, Hansen wanted to wrap the commercial by reminding audiences that what they were about to see in Primetime was “a Hollywood fantasy version” of what actually happened. But there were reservations about potential clapback from A24. This made the line being taken out.

Last week on Fox News, Hansen claimed he was asked to sign “a very restrictive agreement” to attend the advanced screening of Primetime he was invited to. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he said emphatically. “The lawyers at A24 wanted me to sign away my rights to my name, image and brand essentially, as well as any potential legal rights that would come out of the movie,” added Hansen. “I couldn’t sign that, so they didn’t show me the film. I went all the way over there.”

Primetime hits theatres on September 25.