An original story? Check. Adult subject matter? Check. An absence of franchise potential? Check. We can quibble about the quality of “Hit Man” (I happen to agree with this sentiment from Chris Evangelista’s review for /Film: “It’s fun, it’s charming, it’s a little too slight for its own good”), but there’s nothing about the movie that suggests it was manufactured in a lab at the behest of studio executives. “Glen and I wrote it speculatively and we didn’t get paid anything, we just tried to get the film made,” Linklater confirmed, adding:

“We really felt we were onto something, we felt we had written a film noir, a crime film that’s also a screwball comedy about a couple that you’re rooting to be together, but I think they [the studios] wanted it to be just one thing.”

Linklater added that he and Powell had “frustrating conversations” with “studios and people like that” who basically wanted the film to be an action rom-com about an actual hitman like “Grosse Pointe Blank” — “something they’d seen before,” as Linklater put it, and would therefore be seen as a safer bet. As he observed:

“You don’t get fired for doing a sequel or an origin story, something that already exists. You don’t get in trouble for what’s obvious and commercial. What changed is that films got greenlit by the marketing department and then it’s become really safe choices.”

The double-edged nature of Netflix means that “Hit Man” is under less pressure to appeal to a sizable crowd, but it’s also way less likely to become a breakout success like Powell’s rom-com hit “Anyone But You.” But maybe that’s how Linklater prefers it; so long as he can stay in his lane and chart his own course, he doesn’t seem worried about others roaring by him on the highway (nor does he need to be).

“Hit Man” is now streaming on Netflix.