Richard Linklater’s ‘Hit Man’, with Glen Powell, sells to Netflix for USD 20M

‘Hit Man’, directed and co-written by Richard Linklater, stars ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ actor Glen Powell as a psychology professor who works as an undercover posing as a hit man

The Toronto International Film Festival may be over but it’s biggest sale has just gone through. Netflix has acquired Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, for USD 20 million. Hit Man, which Linklater and Powell co-wrote, stars the Top Gun: Maverick actor as a New Orleans psychology professor who also works undercover posing as a hit man for the police in sting operations to catch would-be murders.

The film, a comic, existential riff on the hit-man genre, was one of the breakout hits of TIFF, which concluded Sunday. Netflix didn’t announce release plans yet for Hit Man, which also played at the Venice Film Festival. The film, which co-stars Adria Arjona as a wife who wants her husband dead, is loosely based on a true story detailed in a Skip Hollandsworth-written Texas Monthly article from 2001 about faux-hit-man Gary Johnson.

In an interview in Toronto, Linklater, the veteran independent filmmaker of Boyhood said he and Powell elected to make the film before selling it to a distributor to avoid some of the pitfalls of modern Hollywood. Hit Man sale is the largest yet of the season.