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By Samuel López | USA Herald

Chris Hansen built his reputation exposing predators on camera. Now he says he may have to build a legal case to protect his own name from the camera.

The man who spent years telling "To Catch a Predator" targets to take a seat is weighing whether to take A24 to court over "Primetime," the studio's upcoming dramatization of his career, starring Robert Pattinson in the lead role. And according to Hansen, at least one entertainment attorney has told him the case isn't a long shot.

Speaking this week on SiriusXM's "The Dan Abrams Show," Hansen said he's been quietly gathering opinions from people inside the industry. One lawyer, he explained, told him he'd likely have a viable claim, then posed the real question: was it worth the fight. Hansen has so far resisted going public with a lawsuit, worried that loudly objecting could hand the studio the exact kind of controversy-driven buzz that sells movie tickets.

That tension between principle and publicity has defined Hansen's approach to "Primetime" for weeks. He's said he doesn't want headlines framing him as an enemy of the film, even as he's raised pointed objections to how it was made and how he was treated in the run-up to its release.

At the center of Hansen's complaint isn't merely the film's tone, though he has described the trailer's darker, more sinister take on his persona as inconsistent with his memory of events. His sharper objection is procedural: he says A24 never told him directly it was making the film, using his name, his colleagues' names, and details from his family life to build a story he understands to be substantially fictionalized.

"It feels very exploitive to me," Hansen said. "It feels sneaky and disingenuous."

That grievance escalated further after Hansen said he traveled to A24's offices for a private screening, only to leave without watching a single frame. According to Hansen, the studio's attorneys presented him with a document that went well beyond a standard confidentiality agreement, one he characterized as asking him to forfeit rights tied to his name, image, and brand, along with any legal claims that might arise from the film itself. He refused to sign it, and the screening never happened.

A source close to A24 has pushed back on that characterization, telling other outlets that Hansen was asked to sign the same type of standard, spoiler-protective screening NDA given to other preview audiences, not a rights waiver, and that he had a week to review it with his own counsel before the appointment.

Hansen's public statements have also come alongside a business move that complicates the narrative: he's purchased pre-show advertising slots at theaters screening "Primetime," promoting his own true-crime streaming platform, TruBlu, where he continues to run sting operations. Whether that overlap undercuts his objections or simply reflects a journalist protecting a brand he built over two decades is, like much of this dispute, a matter of perspective.

"Primetime," directed by Lance Oppenheim, dramatizes the making of NBC's "To Catch a Predator," the hidden-camera series that ran from 2004 to 2007 and turned Hansen into one of television's most recognizable, and polarizing, figures. The film premieres in theaters September 25, following its debut on the festival circuit.

For now, Hansen says he intends to watch the finished film the way most of the country will: with a ticket, not a lawsuit, at least not yet. Whether that changes once cameras start rolling on his own legal options remains, fittingly, an open question.

Right-of-publicity and defamation claims involving dramatized biographical films are notoriously difficult to win in the United States, where courts have historically extended broad protection to works framed as fiction or "based on true events." Whether Hansen's objections rise to an actionable legal claim, or remain a public dispute waged through interviews and ad buys, will likely depend on facts not yet public: the specifics of what he was asked to sign, and how closely the finished film hews to reality.

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