So here’s the follow-up on last week’s news story about Fox removing Hitman director Xavier Gens from the project after he had turned in a particularly violent first cut. IGN followed up with Fox to see if they could confirm the rumour, and although they conceded that Live Free or Die Hard editor Nicolas De Toth had indeed been hired, they insisted that it wasn’t to replace Gens, nor was it to digitally remove the blood either. Here’s a short statement issued by a Fox rep: “Director Xavier Gens is still working on the film. The film still has intense action and will definitely be rated ‘R’.”

So I guess that’s good news, assuming you were looking forward to this film in the first place. But was the original story just another internet overreaction, or is Fox now being forced to save face? Either way, it strikes me as an unenviable position for some of these studios to be in nowadays. After the whole Warner Brothers thing, it just seems like every move they make is policed by self-righteous bloggers, who jump to conclusions at the drop of a hat without giving studios a chance to explain. I’ll readily admit that we here at Film Junk contribute to that somewhat dubious side of the blogosphere ourselves… and hey, sometimes these studios do need to answer to someone for their moronic ways. But it requires a constant P.R. battle to be waged for every movie, and it’s still just as hard as ever for the average person to cut through the crap and grasp the truth.

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