As the Robert Pattinson-led biopic Primetime nears its release, Chris Hansen has recently shared that he’s considering taking legal action against the upcoming film.
During a recent appearance on Dan Abrams’ SiriusXM podcast, the 66-year-old host of To Catch a Predator went into further detail about his views on the new film, stating that several lawyers in the entertainment industry said that he has a “decent case” that could hold up in court.
“People are looking at it, Dan,” Hansen said on the podcast. “I don’t 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’s issues with the film have long been documented, with the former Dateline NBC host stating that he was not consulted about the making of the film whatsoever.
Hansen also said that he took issue with the fact that the movie’s distributor, A24, asked him to “sign away my rights to my name, imagine and brand, essentially,as well as any potential legal rights that would come out of the movie” in an interview on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime.
In his conversation on the podcast, Hansen also said that he has yet to see an early cut of the film.
“In reality, it’s the movie Chris Hansen hasn’t even seen yet,” he said. “If it’s that objectionable — I just think that there are a number of issues here. One is ethical. If you’re going to use somebody’s name and the name of their colleagues and the name, potentially, of family members who have nothing to do with this and you’re doing it because you have this dark Hollywood vision of your creativity and you’re going to take a real story and flesh it out and make it fiction — why, then, do you have to use my real name?”
“You could have done the same movie without it, and the reason why they used it is because it has commercial value. So it feels very exploitative to me,” Hansen continued. “It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me that they would do this and not even say ‘This is what we’re doing.’”