Netflix has shared the official trailer and poster for director Richard Linklater’s new romantic action comedy Hit Man, starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. The film will open in select theaters on Friday, May 24, and then will start streaming on Netflix on June 7.
Based on Skip Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article, Hit Man will be available to stream in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, and Iceland. The movie is rated R for language throughout, sexual content, and some violence.
Written by Linklater and Powell, the movie was inspired by an unbelievable true story: a straight-laced professor discovers he has a hidden talent as a fake hitman. He meets his match in a client who steals his heart and ignites a powder keg of deception, delight, and mixed-up identities.
The cast includes Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Molly Bernard, and Evan Holtzman. The producers are Mike Blizzard, Richard Linklater, Glen Powell, Jason Bateman, and Michael Costigan.
The executive producers include Stuart Ford, Zach Garrett, Miguel A. Palos Jr., Shivani Rawat, Julie Goldstein, Vicky Patel, Steve Barnett, Alan Powell, John Sloss, Scott Brown, and Megan Creydt.
Linklater told Netflix’s Tudum that the movie is “about identity and self and passion. But on a plot level, it’s just a guy who gets in a little too deep. His passions lead him in a direction where he’s deceiving someone he’s in love with and being someone else. They have to deal with those repercussions.”
Powell’s character, the now-deceased Gary Johnson, was a real guy who worked as a fake contract killer for the police. One of the film’s inventions is a running gag that Gary is a master of disguise. “It was Glen who really ran with those false identities that Gary creates for each of his cases,” Linklater says.
“The real Gary did slight disguises, but not to the extent that we see in the film. I was like, ‘Should we really do a Russian accent?’ But Glen just pushed all of that to the max, and I love how it came out.”
Hit Man also winks at the notion that a hired killer is an easy thing to come by. “They don’t exist at the retail level, and they’d be so easy to entrap and arrest,” Linklater says. “Regardless, the average, aware, intelligent person goes through life thinking [hit men] are real… The notion that someone you’ve never met, who’s this icy professional you meet for five minutes, is going to risk the death penalty — I think, as a culture, we enjoy believing in it.”
Powell puts it even more succinctly: “The fantasy of a hit man occupies a place in our brain because it feels like a simple solution to life’s complicated problems.”
Both Powell and Linklater say the writing process brought out the best in each other. “I always bring the script to the actors and make revisions during the rehearsal process, but with this one, we wrote it during the pandemic and had plenty of time,” Linklater says. “We were talking almost every day, and at one point, I said, ‘Let’s save a step and just write this thing together.'”
For Powell, writing a screenplay with his longtime collaborator was a lifelong dream. “When I was 14, I worked with Rick for the first time,” Powell said. “And at that point, I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s one of the greats. I’m getting to be on a film set, a Richard Linklater film set.’ Now, it’s 20 years later, and I look at Rick the same way. I just pinch myself every day that I get to be here.”
Arjona, meanwhile, was the key to the romance at the core of the film. “Casting Madison was the crucial moment,” Linklater said. “It had to be someone a guy would risk everything they’ve worked for to be with. And yet, she had to be very sympathetic. Ultimately, what we were asking her to do is just be a real person.”
“Madison’s intentions in this movie are not exactly clear, and that’s one of the reasons why I love her so much,” Arjona said about diving into the role. “There’s an energy about Madison that is kind of contagious, erratic, and spontaneous. I’ve never played a character like that.”
Mirko Parlevliet has been reporting on the entertainment industry since 1998 and founded Vital Thrills in 2018 to cover the latest news on streaming, movies, TV, and video games.