Happy Hitman IIIto all who celebrate.
The recent release of the latest installment in IO Interactive’s legendary assassination games should keep most fans of series protagonist Agent 47 busy for a while. But in between dressing the big guy up as a ramen chef and dropping moose statues on unsuspecting bankers — wouldn’t it be fun to extrapolate the joy of playing Hitmanand fancast a TV series that doesn’t exist? It would, wouldn’t it?
Imagine, if you will, Hitmanas a TV or streaming series. A Hitmanshow could be an “”assassination of the week” serial, mimicking the game series’ meticulously designed levels, or it could follow an ongoing plot as Agent 47 prepares for one big hit. It could also follow along the lines of Netflix’s The Witcher, which is based on the book series that inspired CD Projekt Red’s game series but draws on the game’s visual DNA to blend its serialized and ongoing plots. As a point to Hitman, however, an agent 47 show would have fewer confusing timelines.
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Agent 47 has appeared on screen before, in 2007’s Hitmanand 2015’s Hitman: Agent 47respectively. Both of these films focused too closely on the action elements of the franchise and neglected the games’ comic potential in their adaptations. As a result, they both flopped hard.
With the recent wash of released, rumored and upcoming video game television adaptations (including the aforementioned The Witcher, an Assassin’s Creedseries at Netflix, and alleged shows based on The Last of Us,Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Fallout, and Vampyr), it appears that Hollywood has caught on to the idea that the relatively brief runtime of movies is not the best way to provide gaming and non-gaming audiences with the hours required to immerse themselves in a formerly interactive world.
Tonally, the Hitman game series nails a perfect balance between bloodthirsty puzzle solving and black humor. Agent 47’s dark origins as a clone designed to kill come into conflict with his sparks of morality and endless creativity, making him a fascinating character who never leaves a target alive but will 100 percent hold a grudge over that time someone killed his favorite mouse. Some of the more interesting side moments in Hitman games happen when Agent 47, conscious of his need to fit in around normal people, stumbles upon the opportunity to act in a way that suggests a level of humanity he knows he was never meant to have.
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He also has to be flat out funny. The Agent 47 who icily stares down a target while shooting them between the eyes needs to be the same person who dons a full body chicken suit to sneak a gun past bird-themed assassins. Or slap someone so hard with a fish they almost drown. Or (minor Hitman IIIspoilers), adopt the flawless guise of a gentleman detective and solve a murder just so he can commit a different murder.
As the main character of a game series where players can choose their level of Road Runner-esque shenanigans, anyone playing Agent 47 needs to have the range to switch between whatever mode of hilarity his chosen murder path requires, and to perform those switches within microseconds. One moment he’s a cold-blooded enigma in a suit, the next he’s cold-clocking this poor sap with a whole coconut.
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The clear and obvious choice of an actor who can summon the humor and deadliness of Agent 47 isBarry’s Anthony Carrigan. And no, it’s not because he’s a tall, bald white dude. His Emmy-nominated Barryperformance as cheery gangster NoHo Hank has shades of Agent 47 in his ability to play a funny character who never quite realizes he’s funny at all. Then there's Carrigan's previous recurring role as Victor Zsasz in Gotham, which was a study in what would happen if the world’s deadliest assassin was also the person you’d most like to invite to a dinner party.
Playing Agent 47 would also be an opportunity for an actor of Carrigan’s talent to finally step into the lead role he’s long deserved. Agent 47 may be a killer similar to his previous characters, but he is also the protagonist — if not the hero — of any imagined Hitman show. A series would give Carrigan a chance to develop 47 beyond the variations of play imagined by millions of gamers and further explore the depth and pathos of a lab-created assassin whose level of emotional investment in his profession is constantly changing.
Of course this is all speculation, dreaming, food for thought, what have you, but woof, it’s fun to think about. A slick, deadly assassin who changes outfits more often than most people change their minds, fully embodied by one of TV’s burgeoning talents. Would be nice. Probably won’t happen. In the meanwhile, Agent 47 is murdering his way through a brand new game with lots of replayability, so if you want something real to enjoy along those lines, there’s always Hitman III.
Topics Gaming