Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” ahead of the film’s Spotlight Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Monday night.
Linklater brings his trademark flair for blending genres to his latest film “Hit Man,” a crime comedy romance inspired by a real-life fake hitman. The film stars Glen Powell (“Top Gun: Maverick”) and marks Powell’s first time serving as producer through his company B for Effort Productions as well as co-writer alongside Linklater.
The film is adapted from a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth which profiled Gary Johnson, a man convicted in the late 1990s of posing as a hitman-for-hire despite never actually committing murder. Linklater uses this unusual true story as a jumping-off point to weave an imaginative tale exploring identity and self-invention.
The official logline is as follows: Inspired by an unbelievable true story, a strait-laced professor discovers his hidden talent as a fake hit man. He meets his match in a client who steals his heart and ignites a powder keg of deception, delight, and mixed-up identities.
In his review of the film from the Venice Film Festival, The Wrap’s Ben Croll wrote: “A peak-performance engine running wholly on charisma, Richard Linklater’s ‘Hit Man’ revives and revitalizes a genre in awfully short supply. Written by Linklater and star Glen Powell, ‘Hit Man’ is a deliriously entertaining star vehicle, a throwback to the low-concept, high-reward studio crowd-pleasers built around a comic persona and designed to showcase a gifted performer’s range. Among his many other talents, Linklater has now proven himself to be a master of this form, delivering an uproarious film that equals and (maybe surpasses) his previous high with 2003’s “School of Rock.”
The streamer will release “Hit Man” on Netflix in select countries on Friday, June 7, with a limited theatrical release prior.
Watch the trailer below.
