A big screen adaptation of the original Kane & Lynch game, developed by the renowned Hitman studio IO Interactive and released in 2007, had been in the works for years. Over time, the project saw numerous Hollywood stars attached to it at various stages.
This week, Timo Tjahjanto, the director of Nobody 2, shared on social media that he had crafted a treatment for the Kane & Lynch film, envisioning David Harbour—known for his roles as Jim Hopper in Stranger Things and as Red Guardian/Florence Pugh's dad in Thunderbolts/New Avengers—in the lead. Tjahjanto's post read, "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. Never gotten anywhere."
The Kane & Lynch movie feels dead in the water. Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images.
Tjahjanto's treatment, which serves as a briefing document for a film studio from which a script is developed, joins a long list of unfulfilled ideas for the Kane & Lynch movie.
Over the years, Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx were once attached to the project, but both actors eventually withdrew as the script underwent multiple revisions. Subsequently, another iteration of the film was rumored to feature Gerard Butler and Vin Diesel in the titular roles, yet this too never came to fruition.
Following the release of the moderately received sequel, Kane & Lynch: Dog Days, in 2010, IO Interactive shifted its focus entirely to the Hitman franchise, effectively putting the Kane & Lynch series on the back burner.