Timothy Olyphant, the star of the upcoming movie adaptation of the popular Hitman video game has confirmed previous rumors that director Xavier Gens was fired from the project in an interview with CHUD.
We already know that Gens was taken off the project so editor Nicolas De Toth could do the same ‘re-cutting’ on the film that he did with Live Free or Die Hard to try and tone down the gore and violence to make the final cut more commercially accessible.
That above statement I don’t deny, but from where I sit it’s looked for a very long time that Gens was also fired because his cut of the film was piss-poor.
The news that neither Gens or producer Luc Besson was present for the re-shoots only fuels my argument. If the film’s original director was only removed so that a guy could come in and tone down the film then surely Gens would be kept around to give his input on how the scenes would be placed into this work.
Hitman was the one video game I didn’t think any studio could mess up. Over the last 12 months we have seen 20th Century Fox make one bad decision after the other with this project. They got the wrong actor, they admitted they got the wrong director and I’m sure if they could do it all again they would.
This is building up to be one of the big disappointments of the year for me.
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Not to mention the fact that widespead knowledge that violence has been taken *out* of the movie lowers its commercial potential. Lord knows, I’m not going to waste money now until I can rent the inevitable “unrated” cut.
Haven’t they realised that blood and gore sells. I mean they keep making Saw films and they keep making money. Can’t be because of the awesome story lines… *cough*
Hmmm after reading my post I just want to clarify that last sentence was sarcasm. Saw has crappy storylines (except for the first one)
This is why I respect Stallone for making another Rambo film. He’s going all-out in the action/violence/gore stakes and, if that initial teaser was anything to go by, it’s gonna be great fun!