"So far from reality that it wouldn’t even bother me."
Chris Hansen has finally seen Primetime, catching Lance Oppenheim’s polarizing dramatized film in a Times Square theater alongside a crowd of average moviegoers. Rather than leaving the theater outraged, the famed investigative journalist and former host of To Catch a Predator walked out more baffled than anything else.
The experience has prompted Hansen to fight back in the best way he knows how: by announcing his own documentary project, titled I am Chris Hansen, which aims to present the real, unfiltered story of his life and career.
Hansen delivered the news during an appearance on Jesse Watters’ YouTube channel, pulling back the curtain on a project that has been quietly developing behind the scenes. While Primetime has dominated entertainment headlines with its stylized, fever-dream approach to true-crime television history, Hansen revealed that his own definitive documentary is already well underway and currently being shopped around to major platforms on the West Coast by his agents.
According to Hansen, I am Chris Hansen is a project in which he actively cooperated, produced by trusted colleagues he has worked with for years. He noted that the film was already in production long before anyone involved in his camp had even heard of A24’s Primetime. As fate would have it, the release timing aligns uniquely with the current cultural conversation surrounding the dramatic feature, putting Hansen in a position to offer his own narrative counterpart to the Hollywood depiction.
When asked to give his formal review of Oppenheim’s movie, Hansen did not pull punches, grading the feature film a D. (As he joked, at least it wasn’t an F.) While he offered brief praise for Robert Pattinson’s performance, Hansen felt that the actor’s portrayal of him deviated so wildly from his actual personality and mannerisms that it felt less like a biographical depiction and more like watching an entirely different fictional character. Ultimately, that massive disconnect was what shielded him from feeling genuinely insulted on a personal level.
"What was in it, in my mind, was something that was so overly-dramatized, so detached from reality — as the director put it, a fever dream — that it almost hit me as something that was so far from reality that it wouldn’t even bother me, and I think other filmgoers will experience the same thing," Hansen explained during the interview.
However, while Hansen could distance himself from the personal portrayal, he expressed deeper concerns regarding how the movie frames the broader mission of investigative journalism and child exploitation stings. He argued that the film ultimately functions as an unfair critique of the vital work carried out by true-crime journalists over the decades.
"In a way, it’s a hit piece on me and the series, which is weird, because all we do is expose bad human beings who try to hurt children," Hansen said. "So in that respect, it’s sort of an insult to the thousands of men and women who want, every day, to do the same thing that I try to do in Takedown and did in To Catch a Predator. It’s so far over the top that it’s hard to come to grips with what they’re trying to do here."
Hansen pointed to specific creative liberties in the film that bore no resemblance to his actual life or career. He highlighted a sequence in the movie where Pattinson’s character sits shirtless in front of a vanity mirror, meticulously rehearsing what he plans to say to suspected predators before confronting them on camera. According to the veteran journalist, that specific interaction—alongside virtually every other dramatic vignette featured in Primetime—is entirely fabricated and simply "didn’t happen."
The public disagreement between the real-life television personality and the prestige studio film is only the latest chapter in a tense promotional rollout. Hansen previously reiterated that he was never formally approached by A24 regarding the film’s production or its use of his likeness. Prior to viewing the movie in theaters, he claimed that he refused to sign a standard waiver before entering a private screening because the studio allegedly wanted him to sign away his fundamental rights.
The friction between the subject and the studio also spilled over into traditional advertising channels. Ahead of the film’s release, Hansen purchased promotional advertisements for his own true-crime streaming platform to run before every single theatrical screening of Primetime, ensuring that moviegoers walking in to see the fictionalized account were immediately directed to his actual archival work.
While Hansen evaluated the cinematic experiment as a D-grade misfire, critical reception elsewhere has been vastly different. IGN’s official review of Primetime awarded the film a glowing nine out of ten, praising it as a "blast from the past with a sickly allure" that manages to be "as garish as its subject: Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator."
With Primetime continuing to spark intense debates among cinephiles, television historians, and true-crime enthusiasts alike, Hansen’s upcoming documentary I am Chris Hansen promises to give audiences a contrasting, firsthand perspective on the man who became a household name by stepping into the shadows to protect the vulnerable.
