By John Gaudiosi

The R-rated Hitman made a respectable $US 21 million over the Thanksgiving weekend, facing off against heavy competition from Disney’s Enchanted and Paramount’s Beowulf, both of which were aimed at families. Robert Knepper, who’s best known as T-Bag on Fox’s “Prison Break,” plays Russian chief agent Yuri Marklov in 20th Century Fox’s Hitman movie.

In fact, it was his work in “Prison Break” that sealed the deal, because his first audition was bad and he sent in a tape afterward that got him another look. When director Xavier Gens saw it was T-Bag, he said Knepper had to be in the movie. But with just two weeks to go from southern pedophile to Russian agent, Knepper had no idea Hitman was a videogame.

“Fox eventually told me about the Hitman videogame, but I read the script and I honestly felt like I didn’t need to see the game,” said Knepper. “I didn’t need to know anything about the videogame because everything that I felt as an actor that I needed to know about the story was in the script. It had a great beginning, middle and end, it had a great conflict, a great hero, and a great anti-hero.”