Glen Powell on why ‘Hit Man’ was a tough sell for studios, capitalising on career heat and filmmaking ambitions

In the past year, Glen Powell has crashed the Hollywood A-list via back-to-back hits Anyone But You and Twisters. In between the release of those films, he was announced in three major big-screen roles: Blueprint Pictures and Studiocanal’s Huntington, which is a loose remake of Kind Hearts And Coronets; Edgar Wright’s The Running Man for Para­mount; and an untitled film with JJ Abrams, about which Powell tells Screen International, “I cannot say a single thing about it.”

However, it is a modestly budgeted independent film that may prove most consequential for Powell in the long run: his first feature as both producer and screenwriter, and a role seemingly tailored to his charismatic, wide range. Co-written with Richard Linklater, who also directs, Hit Man landed on Netflix in June, having been bought by the streamer for $20m after the film’s launch at Venice and Toronto in 2023. 

Based on a true story, Powell stars as a mild-mannered college lecturer who gradually unleashes a cocky alter ego after being called on to serve the New Orleans Police Department as a fake hitman – entrapping customers seeking murder-for-hire. Earlier this week he earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role.

The project began when producer Michael Costigan approached Powell, sending him the 2001 Texas Monthly magazine article about the real Gary Johnson. Others had tried and failed to turn this story into a film in the past, and Linklater, who had directed Powell in 2016 campus comedy Everybody Wants Some!!, was initially cautious when approached by the actor (“I read that article when you were in seventh grade”). But the pair clicked when they hooked into a small element of the story: a potential romance with a female client.

Still, Hit Man – which co-stars Adria Arjona – did not prove an easy project to finance. “This was a collision of genres,” says Powell, chatting to Screen in a Mayfair members club, with his pet dog Brisket quietly by his side. “The response was, ‘Do you want to be an erotic thriller, an action movie, a romcom, a drama? Like, what is it?’ And I would be, ‘It’s all those things, that’s the joy of it.’

“The metaphor of the whole movie is you can be anything you want to be, you can own all these different things simultaneously, and that’s okay,” he continues. “But that’s not how the town works. And it’s never good when you’re referencing Barton Fink or Blood Simple. Studios are, like, ‘No, no, no,’ they wanted Mr & Mrs Smith. And so it became something we had to make independently – but thank goodness we caught a lot of excitement on the other side of these film festivals.”

Director Linklater was able to successfully manage the collision (“Rick’s a master of tone, he has been able to navigate every genre”), but Hit Man is a film that certainly qualifies as execution-dependent. “I don’t think I realised how risky it was until afterwards, when some of my people within my world were like, ‘Yeah, we thought this could go really gnarly.’”

“A role like this was never going to come to me,” continues Powell about playing all the shades of Gary and alter ego Ron in Hit Man. “A lot of the careers I’ve admired have a pretty strong creative hand in what they do.”

That list includes Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper and Powell’s Top Gun: Maverick co-star Tom Cruise. “They’re not just thinking about their small piece of the pie in terms of how they play something, or wrapping early to hit a golf game. They’re looking after the whole organism and understand that responsibility, and just feel so grateful to be telling stories at all.”

Work ethic 

Born and raised in suburban Austin, Texas, Powell learned his work ethic early when, aged 11, he was cast in the ensemble of The Music Man for Austin Musical Theatre, serving as understudy for the show’s major juvenile role.

“I got to study what it was like to be the lead of a big performance. I was always excited by staying at rehearsal until midnight and then going to school the next day.”

After landing a role aged 13 in 2003’s Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, which shot locally, Powell’s performance in 2007’s The Great Debaters saw him signed up by senior William Morris talent agent Ed Limato following an introduction by the film’s director/star Denzel Washington, and he relocated to Los Angeles. 

But a string of failed auditions saw Powell dropped by the agency after Limato’s death in 2010, whereupon the actor sought to take control of his own destiny by pounding out spec scripts. A couple of option fees kept him afloat. “I always look at those years as I was barely getting my gas before I got pushed underwater again,” he recalls. “And that’s how it felt for many, many years.”

Powell knows his current situation is very different. “Capitalising on heat?” he says in answer to Screen’s suggestion. “You understand where your stock is in Hollywood, and that you have the ability to make a certain type of movie that you believe in. That’s what I’m getting to do with Edgar [Wright] right now, with The Running Man, that’s what I got to do with Hit Man. You know there’s a Vegas chip that is being put down, and your job is to make sure they are betting on a winner, because then you get to keep playing.”

That chip has been placed on Powell in Huntington, which he shot this summer in South Africa for John Patton Ford, who directs from his own 2014 Black List screenplay; on Wright’s UK-shot The Running Man, adapted from the 1982 dystopian novel by Stephen King (writing under alias Richard Bachman); the JJ Abrams film; and Chad Powers, a Hulu/ESPN comedy series Powell co-created with Michael Waldron (Loki). 

In the latter, which is in post, the actor plays a quarterback whose bad behaviour torpedoed his American football career, and who disguises himself as the affable Chad Powers to start afresh. Following Hit Man, it is another undercover role, while in Twisters his crass, storm-chasing YouTuber is revealed to have plenty of hidden depths.

“That’s an interesting thread to pull at,” offers Powell. “I think I just identify with people that aren’t what you expect them to be.”

Powell retains an optimistic outlook, echoing his often-sunny onscreen persona. “It’s hard because everybody’s questioning where the business is,” he says. “The business is in a state of upheaval, but it makes for an interesting opportunity – because when people are searching for answers, sometimes they’re willing to find them in unexpected places.”

The actor is moving ahead with his producorial ambitions via his own BarnStorm Productions, which he is getting ready to put on a firmer footing. “I’m going to be making some hires pretty soon,” he says. “I’ve had a long, slow burn in Hollywood, so I’ve met everybody in town, and I know how they read, and how they don’t read, what their general sentiments are, and how our brains and tastes may fit together. I’m trying to be deliberate about the move, but it’s an exciting time, because to have a production company, this was always a dream of mine.”

• ‘Emilia Perez’ leads Golden Globe nominations; ‘The Brutalist’, ‘Conclave’ next up