{"id":611257,"date":"2026-09-10T01:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/611257\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T01:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:08:11","slug":"chris-hansen-questions-if-robert-pattinson-playing-him-is-id-theft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/611257\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Hansen Questions If Robert Pattinson Playing Him Is ID Theft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChris Hansen would like you to take a seat \u2026 anywhere but at a screening of Primetime, <\/a>the upcoming biopic<\/a> in which Robert Pattinson<\/a> portrays the former Dateline reporter, famous for his To Catch a Predator show. He hasn\u2019t yet seen the film, which premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival, and he doesn\u2019t want to, according to a new interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, he told the The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> he\u2019s not taking it sitting down. He\u2019s consulting with lawyers and hypothesizing on whether or not Pattinson\u2019s portrayal of him in a fictionalized film, which he says exaggerates how thirsty he was for a hit with Predator, breaks laws.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously, I\u2019m a public figure, and the threshold for defamation is high,\u201d Hansen said to a question over Daryl Hannah\u2019s similar objections to Love Story. \u201cA number of things have to be shown. Are there other, more creative legal theories that could hold them accountable? Maybe. Is it identity theft? What separates this from identity theft?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf somebody takes your name and image and makes money from it in a commercial enterprise, is that stealing somebody\u2019s identity?\u201d he continued. \u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a question for our legal system, I suppose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHansen contended that filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, who also codirected the buzzed-about Elizabeth Holmes film You Can See Everything<\/a> with Nathan Fielder, pulled Hollywood tricks on him. \u201cObviously, we knew something was in the works,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been a reporter for 45 years. You hear things. But to come to you at the last minute and say, \u2018We\u2019ve done this, and we didn\u2019t feel that we had to come to you to discuss it,\u2019 seems sneaky and somewhat disingenuous, especially because the project is so largely a work of fiction.\u201d He also took issue with former NBC executive Jeff Zucker playing himself in the film. \u201cMaybe Jeff is a Hollywood insider,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHansen said that the film\u2019s producers, which include Pattinson, wanted him to sign an NDA<\/a> to se the film. \u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019d love to see it. I\u2019m happy to agree not to give away the plotline or anything like that, but I don\u2019t think I need to sign an NDA.\u2019 We came to an impasse, and that was that. I will see the film at some point, I assume when it comes out, and I\u2019ll be able to judge it based upon that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meantime, Hansen said he has attorneys on the case. \u201cI have lawyers looking at it, the best guys there are in this part of the world,\u201d he said. \u201cBut what do you get out of that besides making a statement? Is there something to be done? Is there some justice to be served? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s also not happy at the prospect the film could be a huge success. When The Hollywood Reporter asked how he\u2019d feel if Pattinson were nominated for an Oscar for his performance, the Dateline host said he thought it would be a bad look. \u201cI think it\u2019s an insult to the thousands of men and women who work hard every day to protect children from predators,\u201d he said. \u201cThey turn something that is very positive, very challenging and not without risk into what is essentially a horror film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI guess it\u2019s not surprising that a Hollywood studio would act in such an exploitative or predatory manner,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about an industry that was led by perhaps one of the biggest predators to walk the planet, Harvey Weinstein. They\u2019ll all pat each other on the back and say, \u2018What a great job. This is really dark and mysterious and intriguing.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in the same interview, Hansen, who has since cofounded the true-crime streaming service TruBlu, said he found the documentary Predators about his series<\/a> objectionable. \u201cIt was almost like, \u2018Have you hugged your neighborhood predator today?’\u201d Hansen says. \u201cHe had a sociologist analyze whether it was appropriate to expose these guys and whether we\u2019re too rough on them. It got a little silly at some point, and I think people saw that when they watched the documentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn spite of Hansen\u2019s issues with Primetime, the film, which also features Merritt Weaver, Skyler Gisondo, and Phoebe Bridgers<\/a>, is set to open via A24 in select theaters before going wide in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Hansen would like you to take a seat \u2026 anywhere but at a screening of Primetime, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46,13305],"class_list":["post-611257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-robert-pattinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}