Fox Sanitizes Another Movie: Hitman

[UPDATE: According to IGN.com Fox is denying that they're cutting the film down to a PG-13.] (Thanks to Jedisprite for the update!)

Can someone please explain to me why in the heck a studio greenlights a movie based on a hyper-violent video game and then wants all explicit violence removed?

Ok. Fine. Yes, I know why: the anticipation of bigger box office and more money.

Hitman, the upcoming film based on a video game (not a concept I get excited about) is set to open in less than a month and a half. Despite this, it has been taken away from director Xavier Gens, who has reportedly created a very violent and bloody film which would match the tone of the video game and have turned it over to Nicolas De Toth for re-cutting and editing.

Big deal, you say? Who the heck is De Toth and why should you care?

Because he’s the same guy that was brought in to be “the cleaner” for what turned out to be the PG-13 rated Live Free or Die Hard that was released this past summer.

Now that film wasn’t awful (I actually enjoyed it for the most part) but I wonder how much better a balls-out, R-rated Die Hard 4.0 would have been than the squeaky clean version we were given. I also wonder if it might have made even more money had Fox stuck with the traditional R-rating for the film. As it was, it barely squeaked by in profitablility at the U.S. box office, earning only about $24 million more than it’s production cost. What saved that movie’s bacon was the overseas box office which earned it almost twice as much as the U.S. take.

Of course that wasn’t the first time Fox took a film that should have been R-rated and turned it into a PG-13 film so that parents could bring the kiddies to watch. Let’s not forget about the first Alien vs Predator, shall we?

Unfortunately Fox must have looked at this as a successful strategy and now they’re going to apply the same sanitization process to Hitman. A movie about an assassin out to purge evil from the world. Using lots and lots of guns.

For some reason Fox came to their senses and is allowing the upcoming Aliens vs Predator: Requiem film to go out with an R-rating. No doubt due to feedback on the ‘net that told them that they’d actually put more butts in seats with the more explicit footage.

I’m certainly not a proponent of violence in films just to have it there and so far the trailers for Hitman haven’t really impressed me, but if you’re going to portray extreme violence via gunshots and the like in a movie you should show the blood, gore and other consequences of it.

Source: TwitchFilm via Filmstalker

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