IO Interactive brought in over a dozen Hollywood actors to better sell the story of Hitman: Absolution. Keith Carradine (Cowboys & Aliens) will play the game’s villain in Blake Dexter, while Marsha Thomason (White Collar) will be Agent 47’s handler Diana Burnwood.

“Diana is 47’s only true human contact,” said Thomason. “They’ve known each other an extremely long time, and in the Hitman world, she is what Q is to James Bond. So she sets the assignments, tells him where to go and who to kill.”

“The character I play in Hitman: Absolution is as multidimensional as any well-imagined character should be,” said Carradine. “The vividness of the world entered by the gamer hinges on detail. To fully engage the attention of the player requires nothing less than the most completely realized universe of geography and personality.”

The performance capture was done at Giant Studios, sometimes with several actors at the same time. Because of the long takes, the performances were more like theater work than movies.

“We had actors like Marsha and Keith come in and do full-body acting with facial and voice being captured simultaneously in scenes,” said Tore Blystad, game director at IO Interactive. “Some of these scenes were very complex with all kinds of props and interactions amongst the actors.”

“We’ve designed a more stylized, more serious, and darker game this time around in both the story line and the visuals,” Blystad added. “The hope is that the movie will be going in a similar direction, and then when they both come out they will speak the same language. They won’t follow the old Hitman games, but rather go with this newer direction. There are more central characters in this game than we’ve ever dealt with before and they all have names and an important role in the story, so working with Hollywood talent was crucial to us. It’s important within the framework of the game for players to be able to connect with these characters.”

“We’ve seen the grit and texture and the character-driven context that IO Interactive is going for with Hitman: Absolution and it’s our goal to bring Agent 47 back with a vengeance next year in a movie,” said Adrian Askarieh, who is producing a second Hitman film with Chuck Gordon and Fox International. Daniel Casey (Jimmy Six) has written the latest draft of the script for the movie that will be independent from the story and characters of the game, but will retain the same look and feel.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter