Chris Hansen ad will be shown before every screening of Primetime that will 'spoil the film'

Chris Hansen may not have seen Primetime due to a bizarre contractual dispute, but the presenter of To Catch a Predator will have an advert that shows before every showing of the film.

Primetime will feature Robert Pattinson playing Chris Hansen and is likely to cover the darkest moment in the history of To Catch a Predator in which one of the accused predators died amid an attempted sting.

Hansen has been fairly outspoken about the biopic, openly stating that he had no part in it and did not work as a consultant in recent podcast appearances.

The presenter and his popular show about catching paedophiles in the act has had a controversial past and the film is certain to cover this, but the 66-year-old is coming out swinging by hiring adverts to show before the film which some think will essentially spoil the movie.

Hansen’s advert that will be shown before showings of Primetime has been released online

The popular presenter’s adverts were first reported by The Hollywood Reporter (THR) who revealed that he had hired the ad space to ‘capitalise on the renewed attention’.

The advert features Hansen promoting ‘TruBlu’, his true crime focused streaming service where he currently runs a spiritual successor to To Catch a Predator.

After his first show was cancelled, he ran another called Hansen vs. Predator as a segment on Crime Watch Daily, and now runs Takedown with Chris Hansen on TruBlu.

Watch the advert below which will be shown before Primetime:

If you thought the advert was a tad tame, one fan pointed out that by seeing what he’s up to now it was like ‘if they showed the ending of Tar at the beginning of Tar’, but it could’ve been an even more confrontational advert.

Hansen reportedly wanted to include a line at the end reminding viewers this was the ‘Hollywood story’ and not real life, but this would nixed over fears of pushback from A24.

Hansen slammed the film as ‘fiction’ in a new interview where he claims the trailer invented full conversations from him

Chris Hansen hasn't seen the film yet, but he's already slamming it as 'fiction' (Mike Pont/WireImage)

In a new interview with Dan Abrams he addressed the trailers for the movie, having not yet seen the film, and specifically stated that the conversations in the trailer were ‘made up’.

He told the host: “The conversations you heard in the trailer never took place in real life, and I was there.

“It’s way out there and not reflective of reality… it feels very exploitive to me. It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me.”

Hansen has not yet seen the film after a bizarre in which it was reported he would be finally seeing the film, only for it to turn out that he was turned away after refusing to sign a contract pre-screening.

Hansen claimed this was due to him being forced to ‘sign away his rights’ only for it to come out that this was actually a boiler-plate NDA intended to prevent spoilers being shared.

Robert Pattinson will star as Hansen in the film (A24)

He addressed this in the new interview, saying: “I don't know why you would require the guy whose name, image, and likeness you used without his permission to sign something to see a film that you mad.”

The film is based on an Esquire article Tonight on Dateline, This Man Will Die which alleges that police and Dateline NBC’s failings in the handling of a case involving a local Texas DA, Bill Conradt, contributed to his death.

Conradt killed himself as SWAT attempted to breach his house after Hansen allegedly had said ‘if he won’t come to us we’ll go to him’ after Conradt stopped replying to the decoy and refused to go to their bait house.

Primetime releases in cinemas 25 September, 2026.