It’s always hilarious to hear actors change their tune on a project when enough time has passed, because they’re not dumb enough to realize they’re not making something terrible, even if they can’t say it until long after the project in question has released. For one of the best-ever examples, look no further than Timothy Olyphant’s thoughts on Hitman.
The video game adaptation was every bit as awful as its reputation would suggest, with the chrome-domed killer headlining an interminable action thriller that fully deserved its 16 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, although it did manage to earn over $100 million at the global box office for inexplicable reasons.
No matter how much anybody dislikes it, though, they’ll never hate it as much as the leading man. In subsequent interviews, Olyphant admitted that he only signed on for the role because Deadwood had been canceled and he’d just bought a house, so a paycheck gig was precisely what he was looking for. Not only that, but he neatly summed Hitman up as “a piece of sh*t,” which it very much is.
Incredibly, reboot Hitman: Agent 47 arrived a scant eight years later, and somehow conspired to earn less money from theaters and fare even worse with critics, ensuring that any further attempts to bring the titular operative back to the realm of live-action have been stalled ever since.
It’s the original – and technically best – that’s been tooling up on streaming this week, however, with FlixPatrol naming the risible Hitman as one of the biggest hits on iTunes.