The way I had remembered it, 2007's Hitman wasn't particularly a hit, and marked yet another video game adaptation that failed to capture anything worthwhile about the source material. But as it turns out the movie made nearly $100 million worldwide off a $30 million budget, and where there's a profit, there's sequel potential. Deadline Hollywood reports that Fox has hired Spanish director Daniel Benmayor to handle Hitman 2, and they may get Timothy Olyphant to return to star as well.
The studio has an option on Olyphant, but given that he's headlining his own FX series Justified and doing OK without shaving his head and tattooing a bar code on the back of it. As for Benmayor, he's made his reputation shooting commercials in Spain and had his feature directing debut with Paintball, a Most Dangerous game-style adventure about paintballers dropped into a battle with real bullets. Sounds like the right kind of action background to handle a movie about an assassin, but if he doesn't have the star back, will Hitman 2 even be worth watching?
