Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn pitched a Hitman movie idea before Marvel
We could've seen Hitman in a world built on James Gunn's typical humour and charm.
Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn could have directed a Hitman movie instead. This news comes from Gunn himself who revealed that he pitched the idea of a movie on Agent 47 well before he thought about bringing Star-Lord and his team of screw-ups on to the live screen. Gunn pitched the idea of a Hitman movie to IO Interactive and the studio was apparently on board too. What went wrong though, one might ask.
James Gunn could have directed a Hitman movie
Well, while the studio was on board with the idea of bringing James Gunn at the helm, one of the producers wasn’t very keen on that decision. Ultimately, James Gunn was no longer pursuing that project and weeks later, he was signed up by Marvel’s Kevin Feige to bring Guardians of the Galaxy to life.
Weeks before I got Guardians I pitched a HITMAN movie. The studio really wanted to hire me, but a producer on the project did not. I was bummed then, but thank God, because I would have never been able to do GotG if they had said yes! https://t.co/0JYQGBsuGY
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) September 6, 2022
There have been several Hitman movies in the past. The first Hitman movie was released in Xavier Gens in 2007. It starred Timothy Olyphant as the Silent Assassin and I think it was a movie that actually lived up to the name. Olyphant portrayed Agent 47 as the one-man army he is way before John Wick came on to the scene.
However, the movie barely scratched the surface of who Agent 47 truly is and his backstory. There was another Hitman movie in 2015 and it failed to match to even surpass what was achieved with the first movie. This movie had Rupert Friend starring as Agent 47 but the Homeland actor was not as convincing in the role. There was a sequel in the works but it was reportedly put to bed after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox. We’ve not seen Hitman return to the big screen ever since.
Video game movie adaptations
Both Hitman movies, much like the Assassin’s Creed movie, failed to deliver as an adaptation. While we’ve seen successful video game adaptations like Resident Evil movies, even the new Netflix series based on the franchise could only survive for six weeks before it was cancelled. Apart from Pokemon's Detective Pikachu, there’s hardly been a video game-based movie that has lived up to the billing. In a long list of failures, we’ve got Need For Speed starring Aaron Paul, Tomb Raider reboot, several Mortal Kombat movies and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Several of these projects had big names attached but never really got off to a flying start. Currently, Sonic the Hedgehog is the latest attempt to bring Sega’s iconic speedster to the screen and maybe with Jim Carrey, apparently all is possible to achieve.