"I got to shag his wife and kill him, so let's see what happens in the game": 26 years before becoming David Bateson's target in Hitman, Mads Mikkelsen worked with the Agent 47 actor on a Danish short film

He's not returning for Death Stranding 2, but Mads Mikkelsen's latest video game role sees him play James Bond villain Le Chiffre as a new target for Agent 47 in Hitman: World of Assassination. In a recent Q&A following Hitman studio IO Interactive's big 2025 showcase, Mikkelsen and Agent 47 actor David Bateson discussed the fringe project that first brought them together, which ironically saw Mikkelsen kill Bateson's character.

"Mads and I worked on a small film together back in [1998, 99]," Bateson begins.

"94," Mikkelsen replies.

That film is Tom Merritt, a short adaptation based on Edgar Lee Master's 1915 poem collection, the Spoon River Anthology. Online records indicate Bateson was right about the release date: 1999. The whole thing is on YouTube here:

"Oh my god. Who am I again?" Bateson continues. "Anyway, you were at drama school, which is scary. We did this little movie. It was a love triangle. He was having an affair with my wife. The short story is this: it's set in 1895, I go away hunting, he turns up to seduce my wife. She is putting sheets out on the line, and he starts sneaking up and fumbling around with my wife.

"Anyway, he did something – I'm watching this scene, he's about 25, 30 feet away from me, I'm standing next to the director, we've got a monitor in front of us and I'm watching it live. He goes and leans against this pole as she's putting these sheets on the washing line, and he's like, waiting for ya, I'll wait. And then he does something that totally rocked my boat. He starts spitting – because he's such a romantic guy. He's looking at her, his arms are folded, and he just [spits]. And he does this a couple of times.

"So I lean across to the director, and I'm going, wait a minute. That's not very sexy. And I'm looking at him doing it live, and then I look at the monitor, and something was insane. It was brilliant. It was sexy and raw and just, oh, I'm gonna, I'll let you finish and then you're mine. The point is, I leaned across to the director, during the take, and I whispered to him, does Mads know what he's doing? And the director said, 'I don't think so, but don't tell him.' Because it was insanely good."

"It worked on your wife though," Mikkelsen cuts in.

"I'm rather pleased about that because she's here tonight," Bateson responds. "That was maybe a sign of what was to come. And I've waited 100 years to tell you this story of the talent I saw that day when he was still studying at drama school. Give it up for Mads."

Mikkelsen says he previously had "no idea" that Bateson played Agent 47: "I walked into the room today and the guys were pitching me the game and I was watching it, and all of the sudden, the hitman comes in and I'm like, wait a second, is that David? So yeah, it was my very first thing I ever did, and I got to shag his wife and kill him, so let's see what happens in this game."

"Yeah, you killed me," Bateson says. "Asshole."

007 First Light is "a distinct and separate universe," says IO Interactive, despite Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre coming to Hitman.