'Hit Man': Netflix's true-crime comedy nearly went to Brad Pitt

NEW YORK — A night after Bradley Cooper’s surprise appearance, another major star descended on the New York Film Festival.

“I have a surprise for you guys,” Richard Linklater told an elated crowd at Tuesday’s premiere of “Hit Man.” “Glen Powell is here … Glen Powell Sr.!”

Linklater was of course referring to Powell’s dad, who along with his wife and daughter, carried photo cutout boards of the “Top Gun: Maverick” star, who could not attend the fest due to the Hollywood actors’ strike.

The sweet gesture was one of many great moments at Tuesday’s sold-out screening of “Hit Man,” which has become a runaway audience favorite on the fall festival circuit. The film was acquired by Netflix last month, although a release date has not yet been announced.

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Based on a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, the movie tells the semi-true story of Gary Johnson (Powell), a philosophy professor-turned-undercover cop. Gary’s job is to impersonate a hitman: meeting up with people who want to place a hit on someone and thereby assisting in their arrests. But Gary is thrown a curve when he falls for the ravishing Maddy Masters (Adria Arjona), a prospective client who hires him to kill her abusive husband.

Linklater, 63, first read “Hit Man” when the story was published. He was eager to pursue a big-screen adaptation, but he didn’t have the rights.

“Back there in the early 2000s, at some point Brad Pitt had optioned it,” Linklater explained at a post-screening Q&A. “There was a script written. It just kind of floated around.”

The rights became available again during the pandemic, when Powell, 34, happened to discover the original story.

“Glen called me up and was like, ‘Hey, Rick, I read this article,’” Linklater said. “And I was like, ‘Glen, I read that article when you were in junior high.’ And we just started talking.”

The duo previously collaborated on Linklater’s “Fast Food Nation” (2006), “Everybody Wants Some!!” (2016) and “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood” (2022). But “Hit Man” marked their first time co-writing a script, as Linklater has previously done with actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke on the “Before” trilogy.

Arjona also worked on the screenplay when she came aboard, and the trio rehearsed extensively before shooting last fall. For Linklater, her casting was crucial to the movie.

“She had to check a lot of boxes,” he said, earning laughs. “To be a proper femme fatale, you have to be like, ‘Would you give up everything you’ve worked for – your whole life – for her?’ Yes. She checked that box.”

With its stranger-than-fiction origins, “Hit Man” could easily strike gold on Netflix. The streamer ignited a pop-culture phenomenon with 2020 true-crime series “Tiger King,” which followed zookeeper Joe Exotic and his attempt to place a hit on rival Carole Baskin.

“I always thought it was fascinating that hitmen are this thing,” Linklater said. “It’s so ridiculous if you think about it. Like that ‘Tiger King’ idiot hiring a hitman!”

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