James Gunn Pitched A Hitman Movie Before Directing Guardians Of The Galaxy

thegamer.com:

Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has revealed that he once pitched a Hitman movie, just weeks before getting involved with the MCU.

For a series that is best-known for having the player make as little noise as possible and try to blend into a crowd, there have been a surprising amount of attemps to bring Hitman to the big screen, with one more currently in development for Hulu. Although it never came to pass, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has revealed that he once pitched a Hitman adaptation to an unnamed studio.

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Over on Twitter, James Gunn regularly answers questions sent in from fans. One fan asked him if there's any video game series that he thinks would make for a good film, specifically noting Netflix's BioShock as the reason for asking. Gunn replied, revealing that he'd actually pitched a Hitman movie that got rejected after a producer on the project said no.

Gunn said, "Weeks before I got Guardians I pitched a HITMAN movie. The studio really wanted to hire me, but a producer on the project did not. I was bummed then, but thank God, because I would have never been able to do GotG if they had said yes!"

As reported by GamesRadar, this isn't actually the first time that Gunn has mentioned the rejected Hitman movie. As shared by The A.V. Club back in 2017, Gunn randomly Tweeted out, "I tried to make a Hitman movie a few years ago. But the producers at the time didn’t want to make it R rated, so they passed".

Interestingly, Gunn doesn't note in his most recent mention of the project that it was rejected due to it being R-rated. It's also worth pointing out that all of the Hitman films that have been released in the past