The Hitman TV show has been silently assassinated: ‘It’s dead in the water’

In news you may have seen coming, given it was originally announced 9 years ago, the Hitman TV series that was planned to air on Hulu is dead. So John Wick creator Derek Kolstad, who was down as executive producer and writer on the project, tells The Direct.

“It’s a little bit of a dagger in the chest,” said Kolstad. “Who knows nowadays, but it’s dead in the water.” That’s a far cry from where chatter about Hulu’s Hitman plans started. Back in 2017, the talk was that Hulu hoped to turn a Hitman show into one of its flagship series, and Kolstad had written a pilot script . Alas, I suppose it was not to be.

Kolstad is rather disappointed by the show’s failure to launch. “But, man, I love that thing, because I love that game and I love that character,” he says. “But the problem is, I can write a screenplay, but no one’s going to go out and buy the screenplay. You’ve got to make the movie, you’ve got to make the show. But nothing’s happening with that man, sadly.”

It could be for the best: Hitman’s two film adaptations were both execrable, and Timothy Olyphant—who played Agent 47 in the 2007 film—has been quite forward about it being a bleak spot in his career that he only took on because he needed the money.

So perhaps Kolstad has just avoided the Hitman curse. Then again, if anyone was gonna do something cool with our favourite bald murderer, it’d be the guy who created John Wick, and we’re in a very good spot for videogame adaptations right now, with shows like Fallout and The Last of Us getting plaudits all over the shop.

This probably would not have happened in the show. (Image credit: Square Enix)

Maybe we’ve been robbed of the Hitman adaptation of our dreams. We won’t know unless Kolstad’s script gets out there or someone else picks it up.

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