FOX working on another HITMAN movie

[GreenScar]

Update

Looks like Olyphant has yet to be contacted for the sequel. Is he a must if they make another movie?

There's been talk lately of 20th Century Fox doing a sequel to their hit action movie Hitman, but as they work on figuring out a script, ComingSoon.net caught up with the movie's lead actor Timothy Olyphant at the junket for David Twohy's A Perfect Getaway and asked whether we might see him returning as Agent 47 in the proposed Hitman 2.

"It's not on my schedule," he said diplomatically. "If they want me to do another one, I supposed they could have me, yes," he suggested when asked whether he signed on to do more than one movie. "The things that I've got in front of me right now I'm really excited about the television show. What I can tell you about ‘Hitman' is that I'm thrilled that it was as successful as it was and it was a really nice opportunity and I appreciate that opportunity."

That television show Olyphant refers to his next big project, the new FX series "Lawman" based on Elmore Leonard's U.S. Marshall character Raylan Givens, who appeared in the novels "Pronto" and "Riding the Rap," the pilot being based on the short story "Fire in the Hole." It will air in the spring of next year. "We shot the pilot and it's been picked up. I start shooting in October or November." Olyphant hasn't met Leonard yet but being that the novelist is an executive producer on the show, he's expecting to have a chance and he's looking forward to it.

In the meantime, Olyphant has A Perfect Getaway coming out next week and then early next year, he's starring in the Overture Films remake of George Romero's 1973 thriller The Crazies.

We asked him how much of Romero's anti-military sentiment from that era of his career was being carried over to the remake. "Participant is behind it and Participant doesn't do anything that doesn't have a real message to it, so it's kind of an unusual film for them. Participant does like ‘Syriana' and ‘Inconvenient Truth'—it's a nice marriage and a nice twist to the kind of movies they do. I think that if there's anything worth keeping from the original, it's that intelligent metaphor where it was a horror film, but it was really a commentary on the Vietnam War. Oddly enough, that metaphor is still relevant in a very contemporary point of view."

Why?! That's the first question that popped into my mind. It doesn't really matter who, even if he is a good screenwriter, but why make another one? IESB has confirmed today that 20th Century Fox is looking to continue the big screen Hitman franchise that started in 2007 with a movie directed by Xavier Gens. Kyle Ward, of the upcoming Kane & Lynch movie as well as the upcoming Fiasco Heights, has been hired to write the script. Adrian Askarieh, Daniel Alter and Chuck Gordon will return as producers, but no word yet on whether Timothy Olyphant, who played Agent 47, will be back as well. Is anyone out there excited for this?

I do know that the Hitman movie is obviously based on a very popular and very successful series of video games, but I don't remember that many people liking it. I actually tried to like it, or rather, I wanted to like it, but I only saw it once in theaters and don't even own it on DVD. I'll argue that it was actually better than the Max Payne movie, which coincidentally also co-starred Olga Kurylenko, but it's really not that great of a movie. Even worse, it only made a measly $40 million in theaters, and probably less on DVD. So is Fox trying to reboot this? Are they trying to pull another Punisher or Hulk or X-Files? Will it even work?