Grisly Beheading Blamed On Hitman

18-year-old Jean Pierre Orlewicz is currently on trial for first-degree premeditated murder, after he and a friend ambushed 26-year-old Daniel Sorenson last November, stabbing him multiple times in the back before sawing off his head and burning his body. After the prosecution spent the better part of yesterday describing a young man fixated on committing a crime, the defense revealed the real reason behind the teen's murderous drive. Hitman. A CNN reported had obviously never played the game.

They dealt with it with a videogame called Hitman that he used to watch, and it was a video game where you got impressions that you would kill somebody - hit them from their backside, where they were not aware that they were being killed.

CNN Video Report On Trial [CNN via GamePolitics ]

Hitman Movie Takes Out Tuesday

If you were one of the many millions who opted to skip the Hollywood adaptation of Hitman during its theatrical run, you will soon have the option of enjoying it from the comfort of your couch. The DVD and Blu-ray street date for the Timothy Olyphant-starring flick is tomorrow, Tuesday March 11, with special edition unrated versions featuring digital copies of the film.

It may not have had the best response from critics, but the masses and Roger Ebert seemed to like it. And he knows what's what. Any huge Hitman fans picking this one up?

SCi, developers of Tomb Raider, Hitman and Deus Ex, have canceled 14 of their projects and plan on laying off 200 people and cutting their annual operating costs by £14 million as part of a company restructuring plan meant to get SCi back on track.

"Following our business review over the last six weeks, we are initiating a clear action plan based on three fundamental strands of activity: a radical change in our structure to a studio-led business, a top to bottom programme of product improvement and efficiency and a considerable cost reduction plan," Phil Rogers, Chief Executive of SCi Entertainment Group said, in a prepared statement. "To get SCi on track we have to act rapidly and effect change quickly. We must allow the world-class people that we have within the Group to focus on strong, profitable titles which will create the value our shareholders deserve."

A chief part of that plan is a fundamental change to the way the company does business with SCi shifting from the current centrally-controlled development and publishing model to a studio-led one, similar to the labels model that EA moved to last year.

Under the new structure, SCI would have studios based around "cornerstone products" like Tomb Raider, Hitman, Championship Manager and Deus Ex. The company is also creating an Eidos PLAY studio which will "fuse together casual and new media resources." Finally, production services will form part of the studio group and be relocated to Montreal from London.

I blame the Wii... well that and a company that has essentially been living off of three franchises for nearly two decades.

SCi Corporate

"After working on top-rated shooters for years, we were ready to work in a smaller company and make smaller games. We started to notice how people with our background were making top hits in the casual games industry," explains Brian Meidell, co-owner of the Copenhagen based company, The Game Equation. "We realized that the high end of the casual games industry was within our reach, and that the shorter product cycles and smaller company setting was exactly what we wanted.

By John Gaudiosi

The R-rated Hitman made a respectable $21 million over the Thanksgiving weekend, facing off against heavy competition from Disney's Enchanted and Paramount's Beowulf, both of which were aimed at families. Robert Knepper, who's best known as T-Bag on Fox's "Prison Break," plays Russian chief agent Yuri Marklov in 20th Century Fox's Hitman movie.

In fact, it was his work in "Prison Break" that sealed the deal, because his first audition was bad and he sent in a tape afterward that got him another look. When director Xavier Gens saw it was T-Bag, he said Knepper had to be in the movie. But with just two weeks to go from southern pedophile to Russian agent, Knepper had no idea Hitman was a videogame.

"Fox eventually told me about the Hitman videogame, but I read the script and I honestly felt like I didn't need to see the game," said Knepper. "I didn't need to know anything about the videogame because everything that I felt as an actor that I needed to know about the story was in the script. It had a great beginning, middle and end, it had a great conflict, a great hero, and a great anti-hero."

Ebert's Hitman Review (Verdict: It's Decent, All Games Still Suck)

What I found intriguing about the movie was the lonely self-sufficiency of Agent 47, his life without a boyhood, his lack of a proper name, his single-purpose training. When Nika comes into his life, he is trained to guard against her, but he cannot, because she is helpless, needy...To the degree the movie explores their relationship, it is absorbing.

Hitman A Miss With Movie Critics

I pass about 20 of these everyday on the subway, this is the only one I could find that didn't have a set of cock and balls drawn on the girl.

The rumor mill has been rolling for sometime concerning the Hitman movie and its rating. tales circulated the internet that Fox was stepping in to PG-ify the film which, as we all know, would have been a bit ridiculous. The more rumors surfaced that this was not the case at all, but nothing was solidly confirmed until now. Our fearless leader took the time from his vacation and possibly a death threat from his wife to send us this missive he received from a Fox representative.

Please be advised that the feature film "HITMAN" has been given an "R" rating for, "Strong bloody violence, language, and some sexuality/nudity.

Well, that's a relief. I still don't have much hope for the film, but at least it won't be the eunuch version.

Assassin's Creed Score Is BAFTAstic

Ubisoft Montreal's Assassin's Creed is shipping in November for the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3, we all know that. What gamers might not know about the medieval adventure is that it will ship with music. True story. There's going to be music and, from what I understand, it will be featured throughout the game, not just a clever title jingle. That music—or "score" as we say in the biz—will be handled by British Academy Award winner Jesper Kyd, pictured above in the boiler room in which he keeps his prey.

Kyd has a slew of gaming soundtracks under his belt, including various Splinter Cell and Hitman jams. His musical contribution to Assassin's Creed has been described as "fused with both traditional medieval instruments and modern synth sounds" by producer Jade Raymond. She, by the way, has great taste in sneakers. Kyd describes his own work as having been taken "to the max." I deem this description totally badical.

More info after the jump, with a score provided by me.

Studio sources tell me that yesterday's rumor that Hitman was getting de-gored so it could catch a PG-13 rating were just that: Rumors.

The sources tell me that director Xavier Gens is still working on the film and that Nicholas De Toth has just been brought in as a consultant not as THE editor.

In fact there will likely be a team of editors involved in working with the film. More importantly I'm told that the studio realizes that to capture the essence of Agent 47 they have to make an R-rated film and that's definitely what the studio expects the film to get when it hits the MPAA "soon." In fact they are "embracing" the R.

While I take this latest revelation with a healthy dose of anti-spin skepticism I am, once more, giddy with anticipation.

Movie site Twitch reports that Fox has stepped into what was shaping up to be perhaps the best video game movie ever made, and "improved" it. And by improved I mean screwed it all up.

Apparently the studio has yanked director Xavier Gens from the film and put Nicolas De Toth in the saddle. De Toth, apparently, is the guy who watered down Live Free or Die Hard.

Fox made this move, Twitch reports, because they wanted to avoid the hard R rating the movie was headed for, what with all of its gore, headshots and inspiration drawn from action films like The Killer and A Bittersweet Life.

That's right, they don't want Hitman to be too gory. Next!

Fox Yanks HIT MAN From Director Xavier Gens [Twitch, via First Showing]

Hitman Actor on Hitman Game: "Not Familiar"

...the important thing is I really think we did as best we could to be really respectful of the game. The filmmaker's a real big fan of the game going in. I was not familiar with it at all, so I really came at it from a fresh look. The script in front of me was my primary focus of the story that they handed me. We had a lovely combination of, on one hand, to be respectful of the source material and, on the other hand, not be a slave to it but be inspired by it.

Uwe Boll Still Eyeing Metal Gear Solid

METAL GEAR SOLID, I loved HITMAN ...but now they made the movie without me. I loved THE SUFFERING.

I love a good fake gun. It's like getting all of the badassness of a real gun without the risk of killing a friend during a casual drunken game of Duck Hunt. That's why these new co-marketed guns from Hitman and COD3 rifles from Tokyo Marui are so appealing. They are close replicas to guns like the H&K MP5 (Not Hitman's trademark pistols that misleadingly in this picture) and M1A1 (some old timer gun from COD3).

But we'd prefer if no one bought them at all. Because the first time some kid shoots another kid in the eye, this co-marketing will give legislatures a direct tie between video games and violence idiots.

Gearing plan "Gun Collection" of Tokyo Marui and the spike work releases [via playgadgets]

Hitman Trailer Hits

Thief, Hitman Coming to GameTap