It'll Be A Hit, Man: Hitman Absolution Details
The Hollywood Reporter has written a big old bunch of information about Hitman: Absolution, because games are like totally mainstream. Also, it seems IO are taking a very Hollywood approach to the production, with its cast already being announced. Including Klundy!
That's Frank Lundy from off of Dexter, or actor Keith Carradine, to you. Klundy to me and my housemate. We loved him. He's really rather good. It also stars Marsha Thomason, who is best known (by me) for her role in White Collar, that is the completely brilliant USA (channel) TV show that you really should be watching. Crikey - she's British.
Um, sorry, Hitman. It seems they've been up to all sorts in secret, with "a dozen Hollywood actors" involved, having already recorded not only their voices, but their performances too in motion capture. Carradine is the game's villain, while Thomason is Agent 47's handler, Diana Burnwood. Thomason, who impressively knows even less about James Bond than I do, gets a bit muddled and explains,
"Diana is 47's only true human contact. They've known each other an extremely long time, and in the Hitman world, she is what Q is to James Bond. So she sets the assignments, tells him where to go and who to kill."
According to HR they had up to seven actors in the mo-cap studios at a time, which should hopefully produce a big shift forward in terms of realism for the cutscenes. This is, they say, to put more emphasis on the emotional side of things.
As is important for any game late on in its franchise, the central character must be betrayed by those he once trusted. And so it is that 47 begins the new game being hunted by the police, muddled in "a dark conspiracy." This is part of what IO are hoping will be a much darker game. The game's director Tore Blystad told the Hollywood Reporter,
"We've designed a more stylized, more serious, and darker game this time around in both the story line and the visuals. The hope is that the movie will be going in a similar direction, and then when they both come out they will speak the same language. They won't follow the old Hitman games, but rather go with this newer direction."
Movie? Indeed - there's to be a sequel to the dodgy first cinematic outing. Which apparently made $100m, despite being pretty universally hated. That has Adrian Askarieh producing again (who is also working on a Kane & Lynch movie for 2013 - I'd not heard about that before), but no cast has been publicly attached to the project, including no confirmation of whether Timothy Olyphant will take time off his newfound success with Justified to reprise his role as 47.
You can read more details over at Hollywood Reporter, and the game and movie are both expected some time in spaceyear 2012.