DETROIT — They made a movie about Chris Hansen. It opens this week. He still hasn't seen it.

"I'm gonna see it on Thursday, at a theater, with all the other moviegoers," says Hansen, over a Zoom call this week from his New York City apartment.

He says he wasn't consulted about the movie, he wasn't asked to participate in any way in its production, and when he was offered an early screening by the film's production company, A24, he says he was asked to sign an NDA beforehand that he refused to sign.

So Thursday it is for "Primetime," which stars Robert Pattinson as Hansen, the Metro Detroit-raised TV news personality and host of "To Catch a Predator." The former reality/news program, which centered on a series of sting operations designed to nab child sexual predators in the act, was a ratings hit for NBC when it aired from 2004-2007.

Hansen isn't thrilled about his non-participation in the movie, but he's making the most of it.

In an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" kind of way, he and his team have purchased ad time before screenings of "Primetime," which will advertise his true crime streaming service, TruBlu, where he hosts "Takedown with Chris Hansen," a "Predator"-style investigative program.

He plans to turn Thursday's trip to the movies into content for his channels, including his podcast, "Have a Seat With Chris Hansen," which derives its name from his "To Catch a Predator" catchphrase.

"We're going to do some man-on-the-street interviews with theatergoers," says Hansen. "I'll have a crew there with me. And then we're gonna do a story about all that on one of my podcasts. We're gonna do a special episode reacting to the movie. So that's my that's my Thursday evening viewing schedule.

"We'll take advantage of it, but I think it's a lousy way to operate a business," Hansen says of the way his "Primetime" experience has unfolded.

"I think it's disingenuous, disrespectful, and kind of dirty the way they did it."

'They didn't want the truth'

Hansen says he first heard there was a movie being made about him in January of this year. He says he had a contact of his reach out to the film's director, Lance Oppenheim — a celebrated documentary filmmaker making his narrative film debut with "Primetime" — but all he heard back was the film was "a love letter to Chris Hansen" and that the studio would be in touch regarding Hansen's involvement with the project.

He didn't hear anything until May, he says, the day before the film's trailer was released online.

"They sent me the advanced trailer, saying, 'This is coming out tomorrow, we hope you like it,'" Hansen says. He said they wanted to talk to him about doing some promotional work for the film, "and I said, 'I'd be be happy to discuss that, but I'd like to see the film, or at least a rough cut, and I'd like to see a script.' None of that was provided."

Then came the screening offer and the NDA, which Hansen wouldn't sign.

"It clearly would have taken away any potential rights I would have, legally. And I told them, 'no, I can't sign, and I think you can understand why,'" he says. "So I left without seeing the film, and they got right back to me with another copy of the same NDA and said, 'have your lawyers look at this.' And I said, 'This is not my responsibility to have my lawyers pick through your NDA. You used my name, image, likeness, and the brand I have built over the last 45 years, you at least owe me the courtesy of a screening.' And they said, 'Well, we can't do that.' And then the conversation ended at that point."

Hansen says he still doesn't understand why the filmmakers or the studio thought it was appropriate to use his name, likeness or image without his permission, or even a courtesy call.

"They said they didn't have to, because it's not a factual movie, it's a work of fiction, and it's only based on my work during one year of 'To Catch a Predator,'" he says. "So that's where it stood."

Hansen says he heard back from A24 earlier this month, when publicists wished him a happy birthday; Hansen turned 67 on Sept. 13.

"I thanked them, and they said, 'let us know what you think of the film when you see it,'" he says.

"I think it's a little weird, obviously. What's the motive for not involving the person whose name is attached to this?" he says. "And I think if you look at the director's comments — and I've not spoken to him, I've not spoken to Robert Pattinson, I've not spoken to anybody but the publicity people and one of the lawyers at A24 — but I think you can draw your own conclusion that they set out to make a dark, overdramatized work of fiction. They didn't want to do a truthful movie. They didn't want to talk to me, because they're probably afraid that they'd be colored by that, because I'm a good guy doing good work. You know?

"They didn't want the truth," says Hansen. "And I think when you realize that, I think the film is an insult to the thousands of men and women who work diligently every day, not just in my world, but in all worlds of advocacy and law enforcement, who try to protect children from predators. They turned it into a dark drama of ego and chasing fame in network television, and that's not what it was about. It never was. The trailer I've seen, aside from Pattinson using my name and using the phrase, 'Have a seat,' there's nothing in that trailer that actually happened in real life. It's a complete work of fiction."

"Primetime" isn't the first movie made about "To Catch a Predator"; the series was also the subject of filmmaker David Osit's 2025 documentary "Predators."

"Predators" rose questions about the show's practices and the way it blurred the lines between news and humiliation as entertainment. Hansen appeared in the film and later hosted Osit as a guest on his podcast to discuss the film's viewpoints.

Oppenheim was not made available for this story, but the director recently told W that he opted out of consulting Hansen because he knew the version of Hansen he was trying to dramatize in the film.

"It almost felt like we were adapting the Internet's version of Chris Hansen rather than the real Chris Hansen. You can self-mythologize all you want, but at a certain point it becomes part of culture," he told the magazine, saying the version of Hansen he wanted to portray came from recent Cameo videos he had seen, where Hansen resembled a "strange, self-aware, hyper-performative version of himself."

"'The Odyssey' wasn't told by Odysseus. This movie shouldn't be told by Chris Hansen. It should be told by the fans of Chris Hansen, which is us," Oppenheim said.

Made in Detroit

Hansen grew up wanting nothing more than to be on television.

"My whole goal in life, growing up in the metropolitan Detroit area, was to be a reporter for Channel 7 Action News," he says. "I thought if I could make that, what else is there? That was the apex for me."

He was born in Chicago in 1959. His family moved to Bloomfield Township when he was 9-years-old when his father, who worked in the auto industry, was transferred to a job in Detroit.

Hansen remembers watching the news as a kid and being drawn to legendary news anchor Bill Bonds. In addition, he was fascinated by the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, which happened just down the street from his home, and the case of the Oakland County Child Killer, "which was frightening, but fascinating at the same time," he says. "Those two events really sent me down the road of wanting to be a reporter."

After graduating from Brother Rice in 1977, Hansen went on to Michigan State University, where he studied telecommunications and got a job at the Michigan State Radio Network, which was run out of the basement of the student services building.

He then navigated a series of campus jobs, and after graduation, he landed a job as a news reporter at a TV station in Tampa, Florida, where he spent two and a half years.

"I was a single guy with a Mustang convertible who was on TV — beaches, fun places, a lot of young people," he says. But when he was offered a job at WXYZ-TV — where he had interned after his junior year in college — he jumped at it.

"People looked at me like I was crazy leaving Tampa, which was not a small market," he says. "But at the time, you know, I felt called home."

He was hired at Channel 7 in October 1984, the day after the Detroit Tigers won the World Series.

Guy Gordon started at the station the same day as Hansen.

"We became fast friends," says Gordon. "First of all, he was one of the most charming guys you'd ever meet. And funny. And in spite of all his gifts, he didn't take himself too seriously. We had enough of those in that newsroom, and he was not one of them."

Gordon recalls Hansen breaking stories about corruption with the People Mover within months of his arrival at the station.

"It became very clear he knew how to source, he did it well, and he could break news," Gordon says. "I mean, 40 years later, I've never seen a rookie — he was 25 at the time — come in the door and instantaneously make an impact with enterprise stories the way he did."

Hansen spent four years at WXYZ before jumping ship to WDIV, the station's in-market competitor; Gordon calls letting Hansen go "a catastrophic blunder" by WXYZ station management.

Hansen spent five years at WDIV before hopping to NBC News, where he eventually joined the "Dateline" NBC crew. "To Catch a Predator" launched in November 2004.

"Primetime" dramatizes the behind-the-scenes events of "To Catch a Predator," including its jump to primetime placement on the network schedule, where it was positioned opposite the ABC juggernaut "Lost."

In addition to Pattinson, who is earning Oscar buzz for his role as Hansen, the movie stars Merritt Wever as the Hansen character's producer, Andie Bender; "Superman's" Skyler Gisondo as a young actor who fills the role of one of the show's decoys; and Matthew Maher as Xavier Von Erck, the leader of Perverted-Justice, the online sting ring Hansen partners with in creating "To Catch a Predator."

The film's screenplay, which was written by Ajon Singh, is based on a 2009 Esquire article, "Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die."

It's a reference to the real-life incident where an assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas, committed suicide during one of the show's sting operations. It acts as the climax of the movie.

"It's tragic, and you hate to see someone take their own life, and not face justice," Hansen says of the 2006 incident. "As an assistant district attorney, he knew what he was facing, and that was his decision, tragic as it was."

Moving forward

Hansen still has a house in West Bloomfield where he spends much of his time, and during his Zoom call he's sporting a hat from Sylvan Table, the Sylvan Lake farm-to-table restaurant, atop his head.

In addition to his apartment in New York City, which houses a podcast studio, he's regularly in Cleveland, where TruBlu, the streaming network he founded in 2020, is headquartered.

Hansen has two sons who work in the news and entertainment business; Chase, 34, runs a production company in Brooklyn, and Connor, 32, is a correspondent on Fox Business. Hansen is coming up on his five-year wedding anniversary to his second wife, Gabrielle Gagnon.

He has several new projects on the horizon: this week, he announced he's partnering with Simon & Schuster to author a series of fictionalized thrillers based on real-life cases he's covered, and those books will start rolling out in 2027. And he's currently shopping a documentary about his career, titled "I'm Chris Hansen," to the major streaming networks.

Gordon says he knew Hansen would be an impact player wherever he went, but he never quite foresaw the path he ended up on.

He calls the success of "Predator" a double-edged sword.

"To some degree, Chris' genius became a victim of the franchise's success," Gordon says. "It kind of pigeonholed him. I didn't want him to be a skit on 'SNL.' Because I think 'Predator' has overshadowed, to some extent, what a phenomenal freaking reporter he was in his own right on any number of beats."

Hansen has reported stories of all kinds all over the world, but the "Predator" series is what he's best known for, and he's OK with that, he says.

"I've decided to embrace it for all the good that it has done and all the compelling drama that it creates," he says. "I think at the end of the day, it creates awareness and a dialogue that's important. It's not just one crime, it's a series of crimes that continues to evolve, and it has evolved over the 22 years we've been doing this franchise.

"So is there a dramatic collision that people find captivating? Is there a darkly humorous part of it that I lean into? Yes. And that's all part of the storytelling process," he says. "And that's why once it became part of pop culture, once the 'South Park' fellas take a cut at you, you know you've entered this other world. But I use it as currency to create awareness. You've gotta be a voice for these kids, and I've taken that on. It's become more than a television series."

And now a movie, which Hansen will get the chance to see on Thursday, along with everyone else.

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