According to a report from Deadline, both Fox 21 and Hulu have teamed up to work on a live-action series based on IO Interactive’s Hitman series. This will be the third time that the game gets a live-action adaptation, following on the heels of two other movies.
The series will debut on Hulu and the first episode will be penned by Derek Kolstad… the man who wrote and directed both John Wick films. Kolstad will also release the third film in the trilogy at some point in 2019.
According to the article, a bunch of producers you’ve never heard of will be overseeing the project both from Hulu and Fox 21 because they all hope that Hitman will become a “flagship series”.
If it’s anything remotely similar to the SJW-laden nonsense of the second film or the disjointed and completely uncharacteristic nature of the first film, then there’s no way that this will be a flagship series to carry Hulu anywhere.
On the upside, Deadline is reporting that the series will be hewn of the creative material that runs parallel to the mythos of the popular video game series. So there is hope.
IO Interactive has usually centered the stories less around the protagonist of Agent 47 and more around the villains/criminals/targets that he’s assigned to take out. Agent 47 is usually most interesting as background dressing or a vehicle to move the action but not the plot.
It was quite disappointing because the first 20 minutes or so of the second Hitman movie perfectly encapsulated how Agent 47 should have been portrayed: cold, calculating, callous, and always several steps ahead. However, the movie decided recycle a rather pathetic trope and then turn the female supporting character into a literal Mary Sue.
It would have been a pretty awesome film had Zachary Quinto stayed the tenuous “main hero” and Agent 47 stayed the supposed “main villain”.
Anyway, I’m not holding out much hope for the Hulu series. The biggest issue is that they keep trying to make Agent 47 a good guy and a hero, when in reality they need to treat him the way the game treats him: as a hitman. They should surround him with cruel villains and treat the series like The Punisher meets The Bourne Identity, with a strong focus on the technical aspects of how Agent 47 gets into and out of scenarios, as well as how he utilizes his equipment to pull off the hits.
Two more Hitman games are in the works, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the games launch along with the new Hulu TV series.
