The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits down with
Hit Man
stars Glen Powell and Adria Arjona after the film’s Austin, Texas premiere.
Powell and Arjona share character backstories, crucial scenes and how they changed throughout rehearsals.
Powell also discusses the obstacles he overcame to get
Hit Man
on screen, the challenges writers face in the industry, and the status of his
Captain Planet
movie with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Audiences know Glen Powell from blockbusters like Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You, but you probably don’t know much about his work behind the camera. For his latest release, Richard Linklater’s rom-com action movie, Hit Man, Powell not only stars with Adria Arjona (Andor), but he co-wrote the film as well. With so much star power behind a romp like this, you’d expect studios to be throwing in bids, but according to Powell, this one nearly didn’t make the cut.

In Powell’s own words, Hit Man is a “genre mash-up” inspired by the true story of Gary Johnson, a Houston professor who posed as a hit man for hire for the police. Co-written with Linklater and the original article’s author, Skip Hollandsworth, the trio turned this remarkable story into a romantic comedy focused on Powell’s Gary meeting and falling for a potential client, Arjona’s Madison, a woman looking for an escape from her current relationship.

After Hit Man’s premiere in Austin, Texas, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff had the opportunity to sit down with Powell and Arjona to pick their brains about their characters in the movie. The duo discusses fleshing out backstories and nailing the crucial meet cute the film hinges on. Check out the full conversation in the video at the top of this article or you can read the interview in the transcript below to find out why getting Hit Man made was no easy feat and what the status of Powell and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Captain Planet feature adaptation is.

Hit Man A professor moonlighting as a hit man of sorts for his city police department, descends into dangerous, dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to a woman who enlists his services.Release Date June 7, 2024 Director Richard Linklater Runtime 113 minutes Main Genre Romantic Comedy Studio(s) Aggregate Films , AGC Studios , BarnStorm Productions , Detour Filmproduction Distributor(s) Netflix

Read Our ‘Hit Man’ Review

PERRI NEMIROFF: In the movie, Gary develops many different personas. He finds one in particular that he loves, and basically makes Ron his alter ego. For you, as in real you, of all of your past roles, which has come closest to becoming your alter ego?

ADRIA ARJONA: I think it depends on the situation. I think in a photo shoot I kind of want to channel Madison, or, like, on a red carpet I want to channel Madison.

GLEN POWELL: I mean, you watch this movie, you bring the steam. I try to channel Madison on red carpets too.

Now I’m gonna start doing that, too!

POWELL: Just think Madison thoughts. I’m gonna go Finn in Everybody Wants Some!!, you know? That was a movie that, after we wrapped on that movie, I think I really had a hard time saying goodbye to that guy.

That was the first time we ever spoke. Eight years ago in this very hotel!

POWELL: I know, isn’t that crazy?

Who Was the Real Gary Johnson?
Image via TIFF

Question about the real Gary Johnson because you cover a lot of what he did in the movie, but I imagine there’s still so much more to his story. Is there any particular thing you learned about him that we don’t necessarily see or hear about in the film, but we can feel informing your performance?

POWELL: You know what I think was really fun about Gary is we get to touch on a lot. You only have so much real estate when you’re making a movie. I think the crazy part about Gary is he was just a very zen guy. He was such a kind person. But in addition to being, like, a cat lover and a professor and friends with his ex-wife, he was also a veteran, and he was also a Buddhist. He was just such a fascinating guy. Also, it’s just proof that as a human, you don’t ever have to subscribe to one belief or group of people. You can kind of be whoever you want to be, and that man just kind of embodied all of it.

I love how this is my follow-up to that but, you’re a cat lover too, aren’t you?

POWELL: I’m more of a dog lover. When I grew up we had cats more around the ranch, but dogs are in my bed. That’s not a metaphor. [Laughs]

ARJONA: “Dogs are in my bed.”

POWELL: I don’t know why I said that.

ARJONA: Glen wants to make that clear, everyone.

POWELL: Brisket sleeps with me, but there are no cats.

This makes all the sense in the world to me! But the way that you held Id in the movie, I’m like, “He gets it. There’s a real connection there.”

Without This Scene, ‘Hit Man’ Doesn’t Work
Image via Netflix

I loved how you spoke heavily last night about how much you rehearsed and refined everything in the movie. Can you tell me what particular scene evolved the most during that rehearsal process?

ARJONA: All of them, really, but I would say the makeup scene. That one, or the diner scene we also spoke a lot about. The backstory of the diner scene was really important, and we talked about that one a lot. And if not, the makeup scene. I mean, that scene went through so many iterations.

POWELL: It’s interesting, though, the dining scene when I was watching it last night, it’s the first time that Madison and Ron ever meet — or she’s meeting Gary, but he’s playing Ron — and you see these two people that are coming in with a lot of maybe realized or not realized discontent about who they are and where they are. And so you have these two people sitting across from each other, and all of a sudden they start off in this confused place and kind of get lost in each other and get lost in this sense of life and this sense of roleplay and this sense of fun, forgetting that they’re there to make each other take her husband out, you know what I mean? That’s the essence of love is, it kind of makes you forget about your problems, and I think that’s, for me, the essence of that meet cute. To really make that work was really hard, and it required her talent, making him fall and making her fall equally. If that scene didn’t work, we knew that we didn’t have a movie, and thank god it was like fireworks on that day.

Because you just brought up the prep work in that scene, I’ll lean into backstory. Adria, I’ll ask a similarly formatted question to the one I just posed to Glen. Is there anything that you came up with in terms of her past experience and what’s motivating her that isn’t necessarily said out loud, but we can feel it informing her choices in the moment?

ARJONA: I think her past relationship. I came in with a very thought-out story and then I presented it to Rick and Glen and we kind of fleshed it out to really logically make sense with the rest of the movie as it was sort of shape-shifting. But I think her traumatic experience in her past relationship, you can kind of see it’s where she’s jumping off from in a way. She’s in desperate need of reinvention and some excitement and freedom in her life, so she kind of just gravitates to Ron. She’s so excited to become this new person and to see excitement in someone else’s eyes, and for someone else to find her attractive or funny or sexy, and I think she does that. So, I think you see her past relationship a little bit.

It’s only the beginning. I can’t wait to break down every beat with you later today during Collider Ladies Night!

POWELL: Again, there was a role on the page but it was not the role that you see on the screen. She brought all of that.

Hollywood Didn’t Know What to Do With ‘Hit Man’ Initially
“What you realize is the genre mash-up of this movie … the business didn’t know what to do with it.”

Glen, a particular quote from you in our production notes caught my eye because I feel like a lot of people out there don’t realize how much you’ve written because of the way that the industry and IMDb work. If something is written but not made, it does not go on your filmography, which is a little frustrating. You said, “I’ve written and sold scripts before, but this is the first one I’ve gotten to make.” What were some of the roadblocks you’ve experienced in the past selling scripts, and what made this particular one different that got it the green light?

POWELL: That’s a really good question because you’re exactly right. There are some writers, like even at the studio level, that are some of my favorite writers that have never had a credit made, and every time I read their script, I’m like, “This is unbelievable.” They’re so talented. But Hollywood is not a meritocracy, and just because you write something compelling and great, there’s 1,000 other people who have to say yes to get that movie to the screen.

The thing that was really actually interesting about this movie is having a filmmaker like Richard Linklater on board is obviously a huge deal because people can see what the movie is gonna be a little bit more. But what actually made this movie really difficult, and why everyone said no initially on this movie– We made this independently. We actually took this thing out, everybody said no, and we were kind of confused because we were like, “This movie is kind of awesome.” Like, we were loving writing it. We wrote it on spec and we thought it was gonna be a big deal. What you realize is the genre mash-up of this movie — what we found to be the opportunity of something truly original, something that we really felt had something to say, something that was exciting and sexy and had thrilling elements and romantic elements, but it was kind of screwball — the business didn’t know what to do with it. And I don’t know what that’s taught me necessarily, but the reaction to it has taught me a lot, which is trusting your instincts. I feel like Rick and I, when trying to take this thing out, always knew there was a movie that we wanted to see, and chasing that is always a worthy cause.

Glen Powell Is Optimistic About His ‘Captain Planet’ Movie
Leonardo DiCaprio is set to produce.

Is the business gonna figure out what to do with Captain Planet?

POWELL: God, I freaking hope so.

I’m a kid of the ‘90s! I need that movie, and I need you to play Captain Planet.

POWELL: Trust me, we have been working hard on that one for a long time. I’m optimistic about his future, but you never know the timeline.

Hit Man is in select theaters now. Check out the link below for showtimes. The movie will be available to stream on Netflix beginning June 7th.

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