Hansen Slams Pattinson's 'Primetime' Film as 'Identity Theft' — SkimNews
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- Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim, opened in U.S. theaters this week (UK release 30 October) with Robert Pattinson playing Chris Hansen in a dramatization of Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator."
- By the 2006-07 season, To Catch a Predator averaged about 7 million viewers per episode, turning Hansen's "Have a seat" into a cultural catchphrase before the show was cancelled in 2008.
- Chris Hansen, 67, branded the film an "insult" and "identity theft" and bought advertising for his TruBlu true-crime streaming network to run before screenings — a counter-move director David Osit called "savvy."
- The show turned fatal in 2006 when Texas assistant district attorney Bill Conradt killed himself as a SWAT team entered his home during a planned sting, prompting lawsuits and the Esquire article that became a key source for the film's screenplay.
- In Kentucky, then-attorney general Greg Stumbo ran state-led stings producing more than 20 arrests, telling The Guardian the deterrent message was: "Don't go to Kentucky."
- Perverted Justice, founded by Xavier Von Erck, claims more than 600 convictions and a 99.1% conviction rate; Von Erck says he rejected ABC's Primetime Live in 2004 after the network declined to fire a producer caught in a Milwaukee sting.
- Von Erck accuses the filmmakers of inventing scenes, opinions and locations involving him, calling the use of his legal name alongside fictional portrayals "bewildering" and "purposely malicious."
Why it matters: The film crystallizes a debate the source traces explicitly: when network news turns vigilante justice into entertainment, the commercial incentives outlast the show. Hansen's counter-move — buying ad time before his own dramatized portrayal — demonstrates that those incentives have survived intact into the streaming era, where Osit argues networks no longer feel compelled to blur suspects' faces or apply traditional journalistic safeguards.
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