A big-screen adaptation of the original Kane & Lynch video game, developed by the renowned Hitman studio IO Interactive and released in 2007, has been in the works for years, with various Hollywood stars attached to the project at different times.
In a recent social media post, Timo Tjahjanto, the director of Nobody 2, revealed that he had crafted a treatment for the Kane & Lynch film that envisioned David Harbour—famous for his roles as Jim Hopper in Stranger Things and Red Guardian in Thunderbolts/New Avengers—as one of the leads.
"Never seen a script, but a couple of years ago when that property was still kinda hot. I wrote a short treatment with James Badge Dale and David Harbour in mind," Tjahjanto shared. "Never got anywhere."
The Kane & Lynch movie feels dead in the water. Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images.
Tjahjanto's treatment was just one of many ideas for a Kane & Lynch movie that never came to fruition. For several years, Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx were attached to the project, but both eventually dropped out as the script underwent numerous rewrites.
Later, another iteration of the project reportedly aimed to cast Gerard Butler and Vin Diesel in the lead roles, but this version also failed to materialize.
Ultimately, after the release of the lukewarm sequel, Kane & Lynch: Dog Days, in 2010, IO Interactive shifted their focus entirely to the Hitman franchise, leaving the Kane & Lynch series—and its potential film adaptation—behind.
