Chris Hansen made his name as the force and face behind “To Catch a Predator,” the controversial television show that specialized in having a video crew following law enforcement as they sprung on suspected (and unsuspecting) pedophiles.
Now, with the Sept. 25 release of “Primetime,” the roles are reversed.
Hansen claims the movie, which stars Robert Pattinson as Hansen, is an inaccurate portrayal of his life and work.
“The reality is, the studio and the director set out to make a completely dark work of fiction,” Hansen, who has seen a trailer but not the entire film, told The Post in an exclusive interview. “It is an insult … I am disappointed that a Hollywood studio would take something that has accomplished so much good and twist it into something that’s evil and overly dramatic.”
The trailer depicts Pattinson’s Hansen jumping around with glee over being “bigger than [the hit TV series] ‘Lost,’ ” howling like a monkey and gloating to a stranger on an airplane that what he does is “a little bit worse” than what the stranger describes as wanting to “bleed ’em.”
“Nothing in the trailer ever happened in real life,” claimed Hansen, who now does “Takedown with Chris Hansen,” a “Predator”-style show, via his TruBlu streaming service.
The movie is, in part, based on a 2007 Esquire article Hansen claimed to The Post was “incomplete.”
Entitled “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die,” the article centered on the suicide of Louis Conradt, an assistant district attorney from Texas who killed himself as his filmed arrest was poised to go down on “Predator.”
Asked how he felt about the tragic outcome and whether he regretted airing the segment, Hansen said, “No. The segment aired just the way it happened … He’s a grown man … who surfaced in a sting operation, talking to two 13-year-old boys, conducting sexually explicit conversations [and] was the target of a police investigation … [he] possessed a handgun and didn’t want to face the consequences.”
Hansen’s show began in 2004 and ran through 2007 as part of “Dateline,” where he was a long-standing, 10-time Emmy-winning correspondent.
Shot with a tense, reality TV edge, it operated with the cooperation of police departments. At a time when young people had begun making more and more connections in online chat rooms, “Predator” used decoys who pretended to be minors and attracted grown-ups who wanted to arrange sexual liaisons.
When the pervy adults answered their doors or rang the bells of supposed teens, anticipating youths who were ready and willing to participate in illicit trysts, they were surprised to instead come face-to-face with Hansen and police officers, who had handcuffs at the ready.
The segments were so popular that Jeff Zucker, then an NBC bigwig, agreed to make them ongoing. The former TV exec appears as himself in the movie.
“I haven’t talk to Jeff in some time. I learned later that he was going to be in the film and I saw him in the trailer,” Hansen said to Hollywood Reporter of the casting.
In the trailer, Zucker and Pattinson have a scene in which Zucker tells Pattinson, “I don’t really like your show but America loves it.”
Hansen said such a conversation never happened. “It’s totally fiction.”
Zucker doesn’t disagree. “The scene in which I play myself never happened,” he told Variety.
According to Hansen, the filmmakers behind “Primetime” did not consult with him for the movie. Then, when he thought he would be allowed a sneak peak at the film, there was a disagreement over an NDA that the movie’s production company, the ultra-hot A24, wanted him to sign.
“I couldn’t sign it in its form,” said Hansen. “There’s a paragraph that indemnified them from any legal action. I couldn’t sign it.”
Hansen said he spent the better part of a day going back and forth with his lawyer and A24’s lawyers without coming to an agreement. As of this writing, he has not seen the movie. “It’s suspicious,” Hansen said. “I’m a live person and they wouldn’t reach out to get any input.”
A24 declined to comment to The Post.
Despite it all, before seeing the trailer, Hansen had every reason to believe that it would be a positive viewing experience. Some of that hope might have been created by an email he received from a colleague who reached out on his behalf. “Spoke to Lance [Oppenheim, who directed the movie],” read the text. “He said, ‘It’s a love-letter to Chris.’ ”
In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Oppenheim gushed about Hansen.
“I always loved the way ‘To Catch a Predator’ mixed truth and fiction — creating this apparatus, blending artifice actors with fake decoy houses and props like the sweet tea and the pepperoni pizza, that would then collide with very, very real stakes,” Oppenheim told the outlet. “How do you create something that captures the darkest feelings of humanity mixed with the feeling you would get when you’d hear Chris Hansen say one of his all-time great one-liners?”
Despite his disappointment, Hansen plans on seeing the movie “in a theater like everyone else” and says he harbors no ill will toward Pattinson.
Shawn Rech, the co-founder of TruBlu, considered renting a theater so that his team could see it, and Hansen could hold a press conference after the final credits rolled, but then decided against it. “I just don’t need that energy in my life right now,” he said.
Both he and Hansen initially expected a very different sort of movie.
“[Hansen] knew for years that somebody was up to something,” Rech said. “We got early word that the script was going to be about a predator kidnapping Chris. It would be a psychological movie, with Chris in some guy’s basement, and having to talk his way out. That sounded like a cool movie. I hoped that’s what they would do.”
That’s not what happened, but the two are trying to make lemonade with what they’ve been given. In theaters across the country, a commercial for TruBlu will precede “Primetime.”
“[We’re] to take advantage of the situation as much as we can,” Hansen said.
Meanwhile, he continues doing his sting operations, in cooperation with law enforcement — as opposed to many of the rogue vigilantes he inspired. He’s waiting to see the final film before deciding if he will pursue legal action.
“I can’t rule anything out,” he said.
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