Hollywood Takes Aim at Chris Hansen, and the “To Catch a Predator” Host Is Firing Back

Nearly two decades after his show went off the air, a new A24 film reopens the debate over televised justice

Chris Hansen spent the mid-2000s telling suspects to “have a seat.” Now Hollywood is inviting audiences to take a hard look at Hansen himself.

Primetime, a crime drama from studio A24 released in September, stars Robert Pattinson as a television host modeled on Hansen. The film is inspired by “To Catch a Predator,” the hidden-camera segment that turned Hansen into a household name. It raises an uncomfortable question about whether the man who confronted would-be child predators on national television crossed ethical lines of his own.

Hansen, 66, has not taken it quietly. He has dismissed the film as a “complete work of fiction,” though he acknowledged he had not yet seen it.

A ratings sensation with a dark ending

“To Catch a Predator” aired as part of Dateline NBC from 2004 to 2007 and was a ratings giant, averaging 8 to 10 million viewers. Producers partnered with local police and the online watchdog group Perverted Justice. Volunteers posed as minors in chat rooms and lured adult men to a house wired with cameras, where Hansen confronted them before police made arrests. More than 350 men were arrested across the show’s 12 investigations.

Critics argued from the start that the show blurred the line between journalism and law enforcement, and that it favored dramatic confrontation over the complex realities of the crimes. Those concerns came to a head in November 2006 in Murphy, Texas. Bill Conradt, a local prosecutor targeted by a sting, shot himself as a SWAT team entered his home with an NBC camera crew close behind. The show ended the following year.

A career on the margins

Hansen and NBC parted ways in 2013, and his later years produced unflattering headlines. In 2019 he was arrested in his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut, and accused of writing bad checks for about $13,000 worth of mugs, T-shirts and decals. He has also faced renewed scrutiny from filmmakers. The 2024 documentary Predators, directed by David Osit, examined the show’s methods and its effect on viewers.

Through it all, Hansen has kept working. He runs TruBlu, a crime-focused streaming network, where he hosts Takedown with Chris Hansen, a successor to the original series. In late July, he participated in a sting with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office that resulted in the arrests of five men.

A divided audience

The reaction to Hansen has always split along sharp lines. To his critics, he is an entertainer who profited from humiliation and staged confrontations for ratings. To his supporters, many of them parents, he is one of the few public figures who took online child exploitation seriously before most of the country did.

Hansen has consistently defended the show’s methods as transparent and its purpose as protecting children. He says he remains convinced it made a positive difference.

Primetime is unlikely to settle the argument. But it has guaranteed that, nearly 20 years after the cameras stopped rolling, America is once again debating whether Chris Hansen was the hunter or something closer to what he hunted.