Chris Hansen slams A24's Primetime, calling it a 'complete work of fiction' — and threatening legal action over its portrayal of the To Catch a Predator legacy.
Chris Hansen isn’t just furious — he’s considering legal action. The man behind To Catch a Predator says A24’s new film Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson as a reimagined version of himself, is a 'complete work of fiction' that twists truth into spectacle. The movie, which has already grossed $19.1 million domestically and overperformed globally, is based on the 2009 Esquire piece about Louis William Conradt Jr., the Texas assistant DA who died by suicide after being caught in a sting operation.
But Hansen insists the film misrepresents everything: the timeline, the intent, even the moment of arrest. He says the police didn’t rush to his door because of ratings. They acted on probable cause. And no one from the show ever ‘pushed’ Conradt to come forward.
The decoys didn’t hunt him down. He found them. That’s how it always worked. The film’s central premise, that the team orchestrated a high-stakes confrontation.
Is, according to Hansen, pure fabrication. He calls the portrayal of his role as a relentless interrogator a distortion. He didn’t pressure anyone. He didn’t manipulate evidence.
He didn’t stage a public reckoning for clicks. The real investigation was conducted with law enforcement, not for television. The only things accurate? His name.
A few catchphrases. And the fact that Dateline aired on primetime. The rest? Fiction.
Hansen, now running TruBlu and its successor series Takedown With Chris Hansen, says the film undermines years of transparency. He points to the coverage on The Today Show the next morning, where they laid out what happened, why it happened, and what the evidence showed. That’s the standard he’s held to.
Not drama. Not narrative. Just facts. But the movie doesn’t care.
It leans into the emotional weight of Conradt’s death, turning tragedy into a thriller. And that’s where the anger lies. Because for Hansen, this wasn’t entertainment. It was justice.
And now, it’s being sold as a story about power, manipulation, and media exploitation. He’s not done. Legal threats are being considered. The clock is ticking.
And the real question isn’t whether Primetime will break records. It already has. It’s whether the line between truth and storytelling has been crossed so far, it can’t be undone.
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