Glen Powell’s Hit Man Movie Now Set To Be A Massive Film For Netflix
According to Deadline, the recent film festival success Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, has just been picked up by streaming giant Netflix for $20 million. The distribution deal occurred during the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and was the biggest deal made at the annual cinema celebration, which was held from September 7 through September 17. It also comes in as the largest distribution deal in 2023.
Glen Powell continues to be on a hot streak as a leading man, with Hit Man recently being picked up by Netflix for $20 million.
Richard Linklater directed Glen Powell in the film that opened to wide and enthusiastic acclaim at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, which ran from August 30 to September 9. It was anticipated at that fest that the comic noir thriller would very likely bring in the best film distribution deal thus far at the fall film festivals. Hit Man more than met expectations by landing the impressively lucrative deal with Netflix, giving it a very powerful streaming partner.
Glen Powell previously received positive attention for his role as Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin in last year’s wildly popular Tom Cruise sequel Top Gun: Maverick. That film was a huge success for Paramount+, garnering Academy Award attention, including a nomination for Best Picture as well as nods for its screenplay, visual effects, and film editing, ultimately taking home a golden statuette for Best Sound.
After its massive success and nearly $1.5 billion global haul, sequel talk soon abounded, and that could mean the Hangman character might return in a future installment of the fighter jet pilot film series once the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have ended.
Glen Powell previously received positive attention for his role as Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin in last year’s wildly popular Tom Cruise sequel Top Gun: Maverick.
While Glenn Powell is receiving a lot of attention for Hit Man, its co-writer and director, Richard Linklater, is of course quite well-known and has had a storied career for decades.
Most recently, the self-taught writer-director wrote, produced, and directed Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, about a young person growing up at the time of the Apollo 11 Moon launch. The film was animated in a style similar to Linklater’s previous successful foray into animation, Waking Life, which utilized a rotoscoping process that used live actors’ performances as the basis for a creatively imagined story.
Despite going directly to streaming, Glen Powell’s Hit Man is expected to be a success for Netflix after a successful run on the festival circuit.
In Hit Man, Glen Powell stars alongside Adria Arjona, who portrayed Bix Caleen in the acclaimed Star Wars series Andor, a major recent success for Disney+. The two play romantic partners in the film, giving performances already bringing them a great deal of buzz. The unlikely duo of characters provides an unusual on-screen chemistry to which audiences are responding quite positively.
But Glen Powell is receiving attention for more than just his performance in Hit Man, having co-written the film with Richard Linklater. The enthusiasm surrounding the movie indicates that Powell will likely achieve even greater star status as an actor and writer from this project.
While there is rumored to be a theatrical component to the deal Netflix struck for Hit Man, it definitely includes distribution rights for the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia/New Zealand, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, and more.
