Ten Years Ago, This Film Ended A Video Game Movie Franchise After Just Two Installments

August 2015 was not an ideal month for American cinema. Sure, this month launched Marielle Heller’s extraordinary directorial debut, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Joel Edgerton’s The Gift was an effectively spine-tingling thriller, and the deeply enjoyable Noah Baumbach feature Mistress America demonstrated the screwball comedy chops screenwriter/star Greta Gerwig would display so excellently in Barbie. However, so much of the rest of the month was middling, forgettable fare.

War Room was treacly hogwash, for example, while American Ultra was never funny enough to properly utilize its cast. The less said about that month’s Fantastic Four reboot, meanwhile, the better. Believe it or not, though, that Josh Trank’s directorial effort wasn’t the only 20th Century Fox reboot from August 2015 that went down in flames both critically and financially. There was also Hitman: Agent 47, which put the final nail in the coffin of a video game movie franchise after just two installments.

What Exactly Was Hitman: Agent 47?

Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) started a relatively popular video game saga by the name of Hitman, which has continued into the modern pop culture landscape with titles like 2021’s Hitman 3. 20th Century Fox produced and released a film adaptation named Hitman (200) that starred Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47. Eight years after that film came and went without leaving a pop culture mark, it was time to try this again with Hitman: Agent 47, which saw Rupert Friend taking on the Agent 47 role.

Music video/commercial director Aleksander Bach stepped behind the camera to direct this action feature, which, to date, is his only feature-length directorial effort. That’s not surprising given the absolutely dreadful response Hitman: Agent 47 received. One of the worst-reviewed movies of 2015, Hitman: Agent 47 was widely criticized for failing to deliver any memorable action or interesting visuals in its bullet-heavy sequences. Drab dialogue in character-heavy scenes also came under fire from critics and audiences alike.

Read Next

Video Game Movies Never Had a Worse Year Than This One

There was also rampant criticism from longtime fans of the Hitman game that Agent 47, while featuring some fan-service nods meant to placate this demographic, still eschewed the stealth-oriented joy of the source material. Resonating with neither Hitman fans or general action movie fans meant that Hitman: Agent 47 couldn’t appeal to anyone. It was a boondoggle that didn’t even go haywire enough to capture the attention of bad cinema devotees, like 2025’s War of the Worlds redo. It was just a flat retread of familiar IP that quickly vanished from both theaters and people’s memories.

The Long-Term Fallout of Hitman: Agent 47

With only $22.5 million domestically, Hitman: Agent 47 was clearly enough of a bomb to kill any hopes of this franchise extending beyond two movies. It was already a surprise that 2007’s Hitman, which didn’t set the box office on fire, got a random reboot eight years later. Agent 47, which fared even worse financially, had no hopes of getting any extensions. There were once hopes of rebooting the Hitman property for a Hulu TV show, but there’s been no word on that project in nearly a decade.

Agent 47 truly killed all enthusiasm for live-action Hitman material across all mediums. Surprisingly, though, things have only gotten better artistically for the film’s leading man, Rupert Friend, since Agent 47’s release. After breaking out on Homeland, this was the British actor’s most high-profile film role yet, but it didn’t stop him from scoring other interesting roles. On the contrary, Agent 47’s failure tilted Friend towards non-blockbuster works (save for Jurassic World Rebirth) that have served him very well, including becoming a new fixture of Wes Anderson’s acting troupe. The Hitman franchise’s door closing simply opened up other exciting windows for Rupert Friend.

That means he’s infinitely better off than the Hitman movie franchise, which went down in flames with Hitman: Agent 47. The mid-2010s were not kind to video game movies, as seen by the critical and financial failure of 2016 titles like Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed. Hitman: Agent 47 killing off the Hitman movie franchise after just two installments fits right in with this era of video game cinema. Plus, that drastic outcome fits right in with the creative lows of August 2015 cinema. Not even the cushiest release date, though, could have stopped a tepidly received movie like Hitman: Agent 47 from destroying its franchise.

Hitman: Agent 47 is now streaming on Hulu.