I haven’t heard anyone giving outrageous praise to the trailers for the Hitman movie. Either people complain about how leading man Timothy Olyphant doesn’t quite look right as the bald Agent-47, or there’s the old standby complaint that video games have yet to have a successful film adaptation. Maybe we’re judging the preview a little too harshly though, because it sounds like Xavier Gens may have gotten Hitman a little too right for Fox’s taste.
A couple of days ago Twitch reported that Fox had pulled Gens from the editing room, replacing the Hitman director with Nicholas De Toth, who the studio entrusted with Live Free or Die Hard earlier this year. The trust was that De Toth would turn in a viable sequel to the franchise with a PG-13 rating. Now the scuttlebutt is that they are trying for the same thing with Hitman: a successful video game movie with a safe PG-13 rating. Apparently Gens’ cut of the movie was far too bloody and violent for such a teen-safe rating.
Since then, Fox has responded to Twitch, stating that Gens is still on the project but confirming De Toth has been brought on board as a “consultant”. The studio denied the allegation that they want a PG-13 rating for the film, though, making everyone who reads the article wonder why De Toth was brought in. If they don’t care about the rating, why take the project out of the director’s hands, or bring a “consultant” in to do whatever it is he’ll do (I can’t help but think that, given the movie’s crime theme, a “consultant” is the person who breaks kneecaps if Fox isn’t happy).
The idea that this could be a rated-R flick is actually a good sign for a movie that looked far too watered down from the trailers. Even if we only get the rated-R version in an “unrated” DVD release, it sounds promising. On the other hand, De Toth pushed the line on Live Free or Die Hard and its PG-13 rating, so even if he is chopping the movie down, this could still be a decent flick. Still, I can’t say I agree with taking a picture away from the person who carried a vision through production. It’s almost never a good thing, which means Hitman could be as doomed as everyone’s suspected.
