David Harbour Eyed for Kane & Lynch Film

A big-screen adaptation of the original Kane & Lynch game—developed by Hitman studio IO Interactive and released in 2007—was long considered a possibility, with various Hollywood stars linked to the project over the years.

In a recent social media post, Nobody 2 director Timo Tjahjanto revealed that he had crafted a treatment for the film starring David Harbour—best known as Jim Hopper from Stranger Things and Red Guardian in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Never seen a script, but a couple years ago when that property was still kind of hot, I wrote a short treatment with James Badge Dale and David Harbour in mind,” Tjahjanto shared. “Never gotten anywhere.”

The Kane & Lynch movie appears to be stuck in development hell. Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images.

Tjahjanto isn’t alone in seeing a Kane & Lynch film slip through his fingers. His treatment was just one of many concepts pitched over the years, none of which made it past pre-production.

At one point, Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx were attached to the project, only to eventually drop out as the script underwent numerous rewrites. Later, there was even talk of a version starring Gerard Butler and Vin Diesel in the lead roles—but like everything else, this iteration never materialized.

Ultimately, after the lukewarm reception to the 2010 sequel Kane & Lynch: Dog Days, IO Interactive stepped away from the franchise and redirected its focus entirely toward the Hitman series.

With no active plans for a film and little momentum behind the IP, the chances of a cinematic Kane & Lynch release seem increasingly unlikely.