Chris Hansen watched “Primetime” himself and gave Robert Pattinson a D: “98% pure fiction”

Chris Hansen (67), the former host of “To Catch a Predator” on Dateline NBC, has finally seen A24’s film “Primetime”, in which Robert Pattinson plays a fictionalized version of him. And he didn’t take a VIP route: on opening night, Hansen went to a regular AMC screening in Times Square, sat among ordinary moviegoers, and watched the film from beginning to end. He made his verdict known on his own podcast, “Have a Seat with Chris Hansen”, and in an interview with Jesse Watters, as Entertainment Weekly reports. The grade was merciless: a “D” for Pattinson’s performance. “A harsh grade,” Watters told him — and Hansen replied that in this case he is “pretty much the only one who matters”.

The former journalist called the film “overly dramatized” and “so detached from reality” that it wouldn’t even be worth the annoyance; a “fever dream” (the director Lance Oppenheim’s own description), “98% pure fiction” and an “insult to the thousands of men and women who work every day to protect children”. What hurt him most, as he told The Independent, was his portrayal as a “distant father” — something he called “malicious, untrue”.

Hansen’s relationship with the film had started tensely earlier: he had refused an advance private screening after A24’s lawyers asked him to sign what he called a “very restrictive agreement”. An A24 source told Entertainment Weekly it was simply a standard NDA. As counter-programming, Hansen bought ads that play before “Primetime” screenings for his true-crime platform, TruBlu — and joked that the only thing he liked about the whole experience was “the TruBlu ad that plays right before the movie”. Meanwhile he also has his own project: the documentary “I’m Chris Hansen”, whose trailer was recently released.

Critics, meanwhile, think quite differently. “Primetime” holds about 86% on Rotten Tomatoes — among the best reviews of Pattinson’s career — and opened with $8.5 million on Friday, A24’s fourth-biggest single-day opening ever. Pattinson himself was not surprised by Hansen’s reaction: “The fact that people are still debating the ethics of this, of a 20-year-old television show — it’s absolutely insane,” the actor said. The film, directed by Lance Oppenheim, was released in U.S. cinemas on September 25, 2026 by A24. The events take place in 2006, when the “To Catch a Predator” segment became its own prime-time block on NBC: hidden cameras catching men who arrived at a decoy house to meet minors they had met in online chat rooms. The original show aired from 2004 to 2007.