A few weeks back, we discussed the news that 20th Century Fox had pushed back Hitman‘s release date, from October 17th to November 21st. Now, according to a report from Twitch, we might know what prompted the change.
“Sources very close to the film” have told Twitch‘s Todd Brown that Hitman director Xavier Gens may have been pulled from the film and replaced with Nicolas de Toth. From the article:
Gens took Asian action films such as The Killer and A Bittersweet Life as his starting point and turned in an explicitly violent, very bloody cut of the film that apparently included a number of head shots and extreme gore moments that would have guaranteed the film a hard R rating. Which really shouldn’t have been any sort of surprise, if the studio execs had been paying any attention at all — it’s not like they wouldn’t have seen the dailies or effects work ahead of time — but apparently, after seeing Gens’ cut of the film, the studio removed him from the project and placed Nicolas De Toth in control of a new edit of the film.
Who’s De Toth? He’s the man behind the edit of Live Free Or Die Hard, a job he was hired for specifically to turn in an entirely bloodless version of the film, and word is that this is his task with Hit Man as well.
A bloodless film about a hitman on the run? It sounds utterly ridiculous, which means it’s probably 100% accurate. Nobody involved with the project has made an official statement yet, so it’s still a rumor — but if you were looking forward to seeing a suitably violent Hitman adaptation, it looks like you might want to make other plans for November 21st.
**Update: Fox has refuted the PG-13 rumor and confirmed that de Toth is just a consultant, not Gens’ replacement.
Source: Twitch
