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

NEW YORK – The Toronto International Film Festival is also over however it is greatest sale has simply long past thru. Netflix has bought Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man,” starring Glen Powell, for $20 million.

“Hit Man,” which Linklater and Powell co-wrote, stars the “Top Gun: Maverick” actor as a New Orleans psychology professor who additionally works undercover posing as a success guy for the police in sting operations to catch would-be murders. The movie, a comic book, existential riff at the hit-man style, was once one of the most breakout hits of TIFF, which concluded Sunday.

Netflix did not announce unlock plans but for “Hit Man,” which additionally performed on the Venice Film Festival. The movie, which co-stars Adria Arjona as a spouse who needs her husband useless, is loosely according to a real tale 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 unbiased 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.

“It used to be the head of a studio would sit down with you, talk, maybe say, ‘I think you’ve got the movie in you. Let’s do it.’ Now, they don’t even want to hear from you. You’re up against algorithms and marketing in advance,” stated Linklater. “So it was kind of great to go: ‘Let’s just make the movie and bet on ourselves.’”

That bet has paid off in a fall-festival movie market that’s been disrupted by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. It’s been speculated that, with pipelines potentially drying up, studios and streamers might be more eager to pick up finished films.

But the “Hit Man” sale is the most important but of the season. Netflix, which additionally dispensed Linklater’s previous movie, “Apollo 10 1/2,” previous bought Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, “Woman of the Hour,” following its premiere in Toronto.