0th Century Fox and director Xavier Gens adapted IO Interactive’s video game series Hitman for the big screen in 2007. The resulting movie - starring Justified‘s Timothy Olyphant as stealth assassin Agent 47 – was a moderate financial success ($100 million worldwide gross on a $24 million budget), despite being unpopular with critics and filmgoers in general. The planned sequel was canned part-way through pre-production (for related reasons), in favor of a fresh reboot for the game-based IP.

The reboot, titled Hitman: Agent 47, was going to star Paul Walker as ’47′, but Rupert Friend (Homeland) ended up taking on the role instead, following Walker’s passing in late 2013. Footage of Friend as the eponymous assassin in action debuted at the International Comic-Con in San Diego last year, but now there’s an official trailer online for everyone to watch (see above).


Costarring in Agent 47 is Heroes and Star Trek fan-favorite Zachary Quinto as antagonist ‘John Smith’, while Hannah Ware (Betrayal) plays Katia van Dees, the daughter of the man who began the program that created ’47′.

Here is an official synopsis for Agent 47:

HITMAN: AGENT 47 centers on an elite assassin who was genetically engineered from conception to be the perfect killing machine, and is known only by the last two digits on the barcode tattooed on the back of his neck. He is the culmination of decades of research * and forty-six earlier Agent clones — endowing him with unprecedented strength, speed, stamina and intelligence. His latest target is a mega-corporation that plans to unlock the secret of Agent 47′s past to create an army of killers whose powers surpass even his own. Teaming up with a young woman who may hold the secret to overcoming their powerful and clandestine enemies, 47 confronts stunning revelations about his own origins and squares off in an epic battle with his deadliest foe.

Hitman: Agent 47 opens in U.S. theaters on August 28th, 2015.