Is it time for another Hitman movie?

Video game movies and TV shows are having a moment. Aside from the high-profile pratfall taken this summer by Borderlands, the landscape is much better than it used to be. With that in mind, could the time be right to revisit one of the most lucrative games ever: Hitman?

The stealth-based assassin franchise has already come to the big screen twice, with the Timothy Olyphant movie Hitman in 2007 — currently experiencing a new lease of life in the Netflix charts — and then with Hitman: Agent 47 in 2015. That time, it was Rupert Friend wearing the signature suit and shaved head to creep around in the dark.

Both movies were decent-sized hits at the box office, earning a combined $183.6m (£137.5m) worldwide. The problem was in the critical reception for both films, which was dreadful. The 2007 movie has a 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while Agent 47 fared even worse — only 8% of critics gave it a positive review.

But Hitman has all of the tools to be a terrific big screen experience. The idea of the mysterious, taciturn killer of questionable morality is a tale as old as time in Hollywood and has reaped rewards over the years, from Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name through to Ryan Gosling in Drive. But what went wrong with Agent 47 and his mysterious killer exploits?

Read more: Hitman franchise given disappointing update as developer teases James Bond game (Digital Spy)

Well, part of the problem was the video game element. For years, movies and TV shows based on games were stuck between wanting to remain as faithful as possible to the source material and the desire to lean towards cinematic feel rather than that of gameplay. That's certainly something that Hitman struggled to manage.

IGN summed up the problem very clearly in their 2015 review of Hitman: Agent 47. They wrote that the film is "almost certainly going to be too much of a generic action film for those heavily invested in the game franchise, and too video game-like for those who aren't".

This is the core of it. Playing a video game is fun. Watching a video game play out on a big screen is less fun. Without the interactive element, we ask for more in terms of plot and character. Fortunately, that's something Hollywood has started to realise.

Recent video game adaptations have got the balance a lot closer to right. It would be entirely possible to watch HBO's The Last of Us without even knowing it was based on a game, while the recent big screen takes on Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros have picked and chosen where to place their nods and winks at the classic games that inspired them. They're just solid family movies, regardless of their arcade roots.

Read more: ‘The Last Of Us’: HBO Teases First Look At Season 2 In New Photos (Deadline)

This formula could suit Hitman down to the ground. Rather than trying to port over storytelling from the games, it's entirely possible to just take the fun, mysterious central conceit and run somewhere entirely different with it. We're in a lengthy gap between James Bond films, so the market for "morally murky guy with a gun who looks good in a suit" is wide open.

So what's happening? Well, talk of a new Hitman project bubbles up every now and then. Back in 2015, Hitman producer Adrian Askarieh suggested he wanted to create Hitman movies as part of a shared universe with other popular Square Enix games, including Tomb Raider and Just Cause. There has been very little movement on that front.

Read more: Uncharted star Antonio Banderas weighs in on the video game movie curse (Yahoo Entertainment)

Elsewhere, John Wick creator Derek Kolstad was announced as the driving force behind a Hitman TV series in 2017. In 2021, he admitted to Collider that he has no idea if and when it will shoot. "I don't know if it's asleep, or slumbering, or about to awaken, but we talk about it at least once a month going: 'Can we do something with that now?'" he explained.

So, for now, Agent 47 remains in the dark when it comes to film and TV. But, let's face it, there will be another adaptation one day and, if we're honest, it can't be any worse than the other ones. Is that enough to make it exciting?

Hitman is streaming on both Netflix and Disney+, while Hitman: Agent 47 is available on Disney+.