In ‘Primetime,’ Chris Hansen goes from man to meme

“ Primetime ,” the new movie starring Robert Pattinson as “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen, kicks off in 2006 — an era recreated on screen via puka shell necklaces and Fergie songs. Hansen and his show about uncovering pedophiles have become a cultural juggernaut. He’s been celebrated on Oprah Winfrey’s program , and played himself on “30 Rock” and in a Conan O’Brien Emmys skit. Later, he even appeared in an episode of “ The Simpsons .”

Within a year, the show would be over and a man would be dead.

“Primetime” doesn’t hit US theaters until September 25, but already controversy has been brewing. The real Hansen has made his outrage clear about what he’s described as “a complete work of fiction attached to a real name.” He’s complained that he was not consulted about the film, and that he was also barred from seeing it in previews without first signing a non-disclosure agreement. Using particularly pointed language given the subject matter at hand, Hansen accused the filmmakers of acting in a “exploitative or predatory manner” and being “sneaky” and “disingenuous” to produce an “insult” that is “essentially a horror film.”

He’s probably right to be upset. In the movie, Hansen is portrayed as an egomaniac philanderer whose delusions become so all-consuming and chaotic that they eventually become fatal. “At the end of the day, a man must be held accountable for the decisions that he makes. Don’t you agree?” Pattinson’s Hansen says in the film’s opening sequence to an ex-marine (Tony Revolori) ensnared in one of the show’s televised traps for men seeking sex with minors. That’s a question “Primetime” wants audiences to grapple with.

At its core, “Primetime” is a movie interested in the ethical quandaries and real-world implications of mixing entertainment and journalism. As the show-within-the-movie becomes increasingly popular with viewers, we watch as pressure rises to make each episode more compelling — whatever the cost.

But as a Hollywood production, “Primetime” is itself also out to entertain at the expense of sticking strictly to truth. Although based on a 2007 Esquire article , it fictionalizes characters, plays with timelines (bringing forward a 2011 sex scandal involving Hansen that was covered by the National Enquirer ) and ascribes fantastical motivations, all to up the dramatic stakes. And while creative artists don’t face the same ethical responsibilities as journalists, Hansen’s discomfort is somewhat understandable — even to the filmmakers themselves. “I think in a lot of ways we’ve tried to make him a complicated superhero, and I think before he forms judgments, I hope he watches the movie and he sees that we started as fans of his,” screenwriter Ajon Singh said.

“To Catch a Predator” began as a recurring segment in 2004 on NBC’s “Dateline” news program on which Hansen was an Emmy-winning correspondent. Partnering with a group called Perverted Justice, whose members would trawl web forums posing as minors, the show would hire young-looking adult actors to pose as children, lure men to a home filled with hidden cameras and then spring Hansen on them. Cops waiting outside would then arrest them on charges of soliciting minors.

Hansen has maintained that his journalistic objective was to try to interview the men in order to understand their motives, but there was an undeniable, if also dark, schadenfreude in watching the titular predators be exposed to millions. “In that moment,” ethnographer Mark de Rond said in “ Predators, ” a 2025 documentary about the show, “what you’re seeing is effectively someone’s life end, and they realize it.”

Even after almost two decades since it ended, the show continues to enjoy many fans, but relatives of some of the men have spoken out against it. “The entertainment industry cannot act as police, judge, jury, executioner,” said Patricia Conradt when she sued NBC over the death of her brother Bill Conradt (played in the film by Alex Winter). (Her lawsuit was settled in 2008 .)

As the movie begins, the “Primetime” version of Hansen seems consumed by his fame to an unhealthy degree. He enjoys being recognized on airplanes, dropping his name when it might get him better service and waking up his young boys to show them his show, which he’s thrilled will be taking on a counterprogramming timeslot opposite ABC hit “Lost.” He also seems to be nursing a chip on his shoulder when it comes to a one-sided rivalry with Stone Phillips (Bill Heck), a more serious newsman who gets coveted assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This guy thinks he’s f*cking Chris Wallace,” one sound engineer says mockingly of Hansen to colleagues during a funny, extended moment in which Hansen lays down repeated tracks of narration using his highly affected newsreader voice.

Mireya Acierto/FilmMagic/Getty Images

According to “Primetime” director Lance Oppenheim, it was this public image that Hansen had cultivated which first drew him to the idea of a movie about the host. When Oppenheim’s wife purchased him a Cameo from Hansen to celebrate the release of his 2024 documentary “Spermworld,” Oppenheim marveled at the character he seemed to still be playing. “He’s almost become this hyper performative, self-aware version of himself, almost like he’s fully cognizant of the cultural mythology he’s cultivated, and he’s seizing on it,” Oppenheim said.

“We liked the idea , almost the challenge, of creating a media collage of every Chris Hansen that’s ever existed — the characters, the personas, the versions of himself that he himself has put out into the world,” Oppenheim said.

Hansen is not the first public figure to take issue with their depiction in a work that takes dramatic license. In 2018, Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland lost a court battle over the way in which Ryan Murphy portrayed her as a “petty gossip” in his drama “Feud,” in which she was played by Catherine Zeta Jones. More recently, the actor Daryl Hannah penned a New York Times piece in March complaining that the FX series “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” depicted an “irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate” version of her (played by Dree Hemingway) that was inaccurate and distressing. “Storytelling requires tension. It often requires an obstacle. But a real, living person is not a narrative device,” Hannah wrote.

Hollywood Minute: Robert Pattinson is Chris Hansen in ‘Primetime’

Oppenheim, the director, said he viewed this film in concert with some of his other works — including his upcoming documentary with Nathan Fielder on disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything” — as part of what he describes as a “docufantasia” genre. This style embraces a “more operatic, heightened version” of reality to better explore the highs and lowers of human experience, he said.

The director believes this same mix of reality and artificiality could seen in “To Catch a Predator” itself. “It felt like you were in sort of a house of mirrors, a funhouse, and a circus that was led by this ringleader who Chris Hansen,” Oppenheim said. “I liked that we could occupy that same space, that we could try and make something that was than stranger than fiction with this film.”

Hansen still has not seen the film, but has said he plans to attend a screening when it opens and then share his thoughts on one of his podcasts and on YouTube. (Requests for an interview sent to Hansen’s agent and TruBlu, his true-crime streaming platform where he still films a version of “To Catch a Predator,” were not returned.) But both Singh and Oppenheim insist their film makes no intentional value judgments about Hansen or his show’s legacy. Their main goal, they insisted, was to explore Hansen as a character and try — as he did with the men on his show — to understand how he thinks.

“You’re seeing Chris Hansen go from man to meme. He goes from person to persona, and you see how spiritually, when you’re in communion with punishing someone publicly on the world stage, it affects you,” Oppenheim said. “We wanted to sort of trace what those effects are.”

由罗伯特·帕丁森主演的新电影《黄金时段》（Primetime）讲述了《抓捕恋童癖》（To Catch a Predator）节目主持人克里斯·汉森的故事，影片以2006年为背景，通过贝壳项链和菲姬的歌曲重现了那个时代。汉森和他的节目揭露恋童癖者已成为一种文化现象。他曾登上奥普拉·温弗瑞的节目，并在《我为喜剧狂》（30 Rock）和柯南·奥布莱恩的艾美奖小品中本色出演。后来，他甚至还在《辛普森一家》的一集中客串亮相。

不到一年，这场秀就会结束，而且会有人丧命。

《黄金时段》（Primetime）要到9月25日才在美国上映，但争议已经开始酝酿。真正的汉森明确表达了他对这部电影的愤怒，称其为“一部完全虚构、却用真名实姓的电影”。他抱怨说，电影制作方事先没有征求他的意见，而且在签署保密协议之前，他也被禁止观看试映。鉴于影片的主题，汉森使用了格外尖锐的措辞，指责电影制作方“以剥削或掠夺的方式”行事，并称他们“偷偷摸摸”、“虚伪狡诈”，炮制出一部“本质上是恐怖片”的“侮辱性”作品。

他生气或许情有可原。在电影中，汉森被塑造成一个自恋狂，一个风流成性的花花公子，他的妄想最终演变成一场灾难。“归根结底，一个人必须为自己的决定负责。你同意吗？”在影片的开场，帕丁森饰演的汉森对一位落入节目陷阱的前海军陆战队员（托尼·雷沃罗里饰）说道。这个陷阱是节目中专门针对试图与未成年人发生性关系的男性的电视直播。这正是《黄金时段》想要让观众深思的问题。

《黄金时段》的核心在于探讨娱乐与新闻融合所带来的伦理困境和现实影响。随着片中剧越来越受欢迎，我们看到，为了使每一集都更具吸引力，制作方不惜一切代价，承受着越来越大的压力。

但作为一部好莱坞制作，《黄金时段》本身也以娱乐为目的，而并非完全忠于事实。尽管改编自2007年《时尚先生》杂志的一篇文章，但影片虚构了人物，篡改了时间线（将汉森2011年被《国家询问报》报道的性丑闻提前），并赋予人物虚构的动机，所有这些都是为了增强戏剧张力。虽然创作人员不必像记者那样承担同样的道德责任，但汉森的不安在某种程度上是可以理解的——甚至对电影制作人自己来说也是如此。“我认为在很多方面，我们都试图把他塑造成一个复杂的超级英雄，我希望在他做出评判之前，他能看看这部电影，明白我们最初也是他的粉丝，”编剧阿琼·辛格说道。

《诱捕捕食者》（To Catch a Predator）最初是NBC新闻节目《Dateline》的一个固定环节，于2004年开播，当时汉森是该节目的艾美奖获奖记者。节目组与一个名为“变态正义”（Perverted Justice）的组织合作，该组织成员会冒充未成年人在网络论坛上活动。节目组会雇佣看起来年轻的成年演员假扮儿童，引诱男性到一处装有隐藏摄像头的住宅，然后让汉森突然出现。等候在屋外的警察会以引诱未成年人的罪名逮捕他们。

汉森一直坚称，他的新闻目标是采访这些人，以了解他们的动机，但看着这些所谓的“捕食者”被曝光在数百万观众面前，其中也夹杂着一种不可否认的、甚至是阴暗的幸灾乐祸。“在那一刻，”民族学家马克·德·朗在2025年上映的关于该节目的纪录片《捕食者》中说道，“你看到的实际上是一个人生命的终结，而他们也意识到了这一点。”

即使距离剧集完结已近二十年，它仍然拥有众多粉丝，但一些剧中人物的亲属却公开反对这部剧。“娱乐业不能身兼警察、法官、陪审团和刽子手的角色，”帕特里夏·康拉德在起诉NBC电视台，指控其弟弟比尔·康拉德（电影中由亚历克斯·温特饰演）的死因时说道。（她的诉讼于2008年达成和解。）

影片伊始，汉森在“黄金时段”节目中似乎被名气冲昏了头脑，达到了一种不健康的程度。他享受在飞机上被人认出的感觉，在能获得更好服务的时候主动报出自己的名字，甚至会叫醒年幼的儿子们给他们看他的节目——他兴奋地宣布自己的节目将与ABC的热播剧《迷失》在同一时段播出。此外，他似乎还对与斯通·菲利普斯（比尔·赫克饰）的单方面竞争耿耿于怀。菲利普斯是一位更加严肃的新闻主播，经常获得前往伊拉克和阿富汗的宝贵任务。“这家伙以为自己是克里斯·华莱士吗？”一位录音师在一段滑稽而冗长的片段中嘲讽地对同事们说道。在这段片段中，汉森用他那做作的新闻播音员腔调反复录制旁白。

米雷娅·阿西尔托/FilmMagic/Getty Images

据《黄金时段》（Primetime）导演兰斯·奥本海姆（Lance Oppenheim）称，正是汉森精心打造的这种公众形象，最初吸引了他去拍摄一部关于这位主持人的电影。为了庆祝汉森2024年纪录片《精子世界》（Spermworld）的上映，奥本海姆的妻子特意为他购买了汉森的Cameo账号。奥本海姆惊叹于汉森似乎仍在扮演着他自己塑造的角色。“他几乎变成了一个极度表演、自我意识极强的自己，仿佛他完全了解自己所塑造的文化神话，并且正在利用它，”奥本海姆说道。

奥本海姆说：“我们喜欢这个想法，或者说挑战，那就是创作一部关于克里斯·汉森所有形象的媒体拼贴画——他塑造的角色、他塑造的人物形象，以及他自己向世界展示的各种版本的自己。”

汉森并非首位对作品中夸张的刻画提出异议的公众人物。2018年，奥斯卡影后奥利维娅·德·哈维兰就瑞恩·墨菲在其执导的剧情片《宿敌》（Feud）中将她塑造成一个“爱嚼舌根的八卦女”一事提起诉讼，最终败诉。该片中，德·哈维兰由凯瑟琳·泽塔-琼斯饰演。近期，演员达丽尔·汉娜于今年3月在《纽约时报》撰文，抱怨FX电视台的剧集《爱情故事：小约翰·F·肯尼迪与卡罗琳·贝塞特》（Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette）将她（由德莉·海明威饰演）刻画成一个“令人厌烦、自恋、爱抱怨且不得体”的形象，认为这种刻画既不准确又令人不安。“讲故事需要张力，通常需要设置障碍。但一个真实的人并非叙事工具，”汉娜写道。

好莱坞速递：罗伯特·帕丁森在《黄金时段》中饰演克里斯·汉森

导演奥本海姆表示，他将这部影片与自己的其他一些作品——包括即将上映的与内森·菲尔德合作的关于声名狼藉的Theranos创始人伊丽莎白·霍姆斯的纪录片《一切尽收眼底》——联系起来，认为它们都属于他所谓的“奇幻纪录片”类型。他解释说，这种风格采用了一种“更具戏剧性、更夸张的”现实版本，以更好地探索人类体验中的高潮与低谷。

导演认为，这种现实与虚构的交织在《诱捕捕食者》本身也体现得淋漓尽致。“感觉就像置身于一座镜子迷宫、一座哈哈镜迷宫，以及一个由克里斯·汉森这个领头人掌控的马戏团，”奥本海姆说道。“我喜欢我们能够探索同样的空间，尝试用这部电影创作出比小说更离奇的作品。”

汉森至今尚未看过这部电影，但他表示计划在影片上映时参加放映，之后会在他的播客节目和YouTube频道上分享自己的想法。（记者向汉森的经纪人和他的真实犯罪题材流媒体平台TruBlu发送的采访请求均未得到回复，他目前仍在TruBlu上拍摄《诱捕食肉者》节目。）但辛格和奥本海姆都坚称，他们的电影并没有对汉森或他的节目遗产做出任何有意的价值判断。他们强调，他们的主要目标是探索汉森这个人物，并试图——就像他对待节目中的那些人一样——理解他的思维方式。

“你会看到克里斯·汉森从一个普通人变成了一个网络迷因。他从一个普通人变成了一个网络形象，你会看到，当你在世界舞台上公开惩罚某人时，你的精神会受到怎样的影响，”奥本海姆说。“我们想探究这些影响究竟是什么。”