Robert Pattinson’s Primetime may be picking up serious awards-season attention after its Venice premiere, but Chris Hansen is not exactly joining the campaign trail. The former To Catch a Predator host has criticized the A24 film for turning his controversial television investigations into dramatic entertainment, questioning what Hollywood gains from fictionalizing work he considers consequential.

One is well aware of how Hollywood has never been particularly shy about turning uncomfortable realities into entertainment, but Chris Hansen thinks this one particularly crosses the line. 

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Chris Hansen objected Primetime's treatment of To Catch a Predator and the people who worked on its investigations. He put his discomfort with the film quite bluntly. 

“I think it’s an insult to the thousands of men and women who work hard every day to protect children from predators,” he argued. According to Hansen Primetime turns work that involved genuine risks and difficult circumstances into something resembling a horror film.

Hansen has not watched the finished movie. He previously declined an invitation from A24 after, according to his account, being asked to sign away rights concerning his name, image and brand, along with potential legal rights connected to the film. He has also questioned the decision to dramatize the story without consulting him.

The criticism arrives at an awkward moment for Lance Oppenheim's Primetime. Robert Pattinson, meanwhile, has defended the project’s broader creative approach and said he hopes it adds to the journalist's legacy, to which Hansen voiced his appreciation for in his interview with THR.

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The controversy is inseparable from what makes Primetime so unsettling: it turns a notorious piece of television history into cinema.

Directed by Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut and written by Ajon Singh, Primetime revisits To Catch a Predator at the height of its popularity in 2006. Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, while Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher and Bokeem Woodbine also star.

Rather than presenting a straightforward biography, the film examines the machinery surrounding the NBC program and the collision between journalism, entertainment and spectacle. Its fictionalized story follows Hansen pursuing television history as the show pushes toward a coveted primetime slot.

Primetime premiered at Venice on September 5 and arrives in US theaters September 25. Pattinson is also a producer on the film, making his awards-season moment particularly personal. For the actor, in fact, Primetime may be opening an Oscar conversation.

But for Chris Hansen, it is reopening a much less flattering one about what happens when real-world moral battles become Hollywood material.

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What do you think of Chris Hansen's criticism for Primetime? Let us know in the comments.