The 'Hitman' series is on a "hiatus" while IO Interactive focuses on its James Bond game.

The video game developer is working on a highly anticipated title based on the iconic 007 spy thriller movie franchise, and

IO's co-owner Christian Elverdam has admitted fans of the stealth video games will have to wait for the follow-up to 2021's 'Hitman 3'.

He told Eurogamer: “Right now a major, major new Hitman game: that’s a little bit on hiatus as we’re building another agent fantasy that’s also taking up a lot of our time.

“But obviously we’ll come back to beloved Agent 47. He’s still very much in the heart of this company.”

The Bond game, which is currently known as 'Project 007', is set to feature a brand new Bond story.

IO's other co-owner Hakan Abrak previously teased in an interview with IGN: "It's important to mention: doing a licensed game is new to us. We've only done our own, original IPs, right? We've created these characters... ourselves, from scratch.

"So, I think for us to really embrace this fully, and really, as I said before, we don't like to work 'mechanical.'

"It's not just because it's a big IP, or it's a licensed game, and commercially this is interesting... It means nothing to us. We've taken a lot of non-commercial risks before.

"So, for us, it's about... we need to feel it, deep inside. The passion needs to be there, so it was very important for us that it wasn't a movie adaptation.

"So, it wasn't a game about... a specific movie, where the story has already been told."

And Abrak noted that 'Bond' owners EON were in agreement with their line of thinking.

He continued: "It's very important that we could create a digital Bond. A Bond for the gaming industry...

"So it's a completely original story. This felt really, really important for us and we conveyed that to EON and they agreed that the result would probably be better doing it like that."