Hitman, the video game adaptation starring Timothy Olyphant, was looking promising. Jeremy liked the script, and reports that the movie was going to be very violent and hard R were heartening to us sick types who like that kind of thing. Now it’s looking less promising. A lot less promising.
Twitchfilm is reporting that director Xavier Gens has been thrown off the film in the final stages of editing because Fox thought the movie was too violent. The site says that Nicholas De Toth has been brought in to oversee a new edit of the movie. As if the name De Toth wasn’t enough to tell you he’s a Bad Guy, this fellow was the same guy who edited Live Free or Die Hard down into a bloodless PG-13 version.
I have tried to contact Hitman producer Daniel Alter to get a confirmation or denial or a comment on this story, but have not yet heard back from him.
If this is true, it’s disappointing, but not overly surprising. Fox is the weirdest studio when it comes to genre films – they seem to fucking hate any decent genre movie and do what they can to neuter or destroy them, while supporting trash like another Alien vs Predator. I doubt that Gens was making his movie in secret from the Fox execs… someone had to know he was shooting for an R.
By the way, chalk Gens up as the latest foreign director to get fucked on his first American movie.