‘The Man From Toronto’ True Story: How An Airbnb Mix-Up Inspired the Kevin Hart Movie

All Kevin Hart wants in The Man From Toronto—a new action-comedy that began streaming on Netflix today—is to give his wife the perfect birthday weekend.

Hart’s character, Teddy, is known for being something of a screw-up, but he’s determined to get this right, so he books a cabin for a romantic weekend away. Unfortunately, thanks to a low-toner situation, the address on Teddy’s printed directions is smudged. He accidentally walks into the wrong cabin, only to discover a group of scary men torturing a dude for information. In fact, the scary men expect Teddy to do the torturing—because they think he’s “the man from Toronto,” a deadly assassin. What a kooky mix-up!

Also starring Woody Harrelson as the actual “Man from Toronto,” this is a classic goofball-paired-with-tough-guy comedy. But it’s also, if you can believe, at least partially inspired by the true story of a (significantly less chaotic) Airbnb mix-up.

Is The Man From Toronto based on a true story?

Sort of. The Man From Toronto is not based on a true story in the sense that there is no real-life incident in which a regular guy was mistaken for a deadly assassin. Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson’s characters are completely fictional. But The Man From Toronto is inspired by a true story, in the sense that producer Jason Blumenthal (not to be confused with horror mogul Jason Blum) got the idea for the movie after he was the victim of a far-less deadly Airbnb mix-up.

In an interview for The Man From Toronto press notes, Blumenthal recalled his trip to Denver to spend Thanksgiving with his wife’s family, where he had rented an Airbnb for the entire extended family. “We arrived at our Airbnb and it was a side-by-side duplex, a beautiful modern farmhouse with a door on the left and a door on the right, and identical for every reason to believe that there were two different units inside,” Blumenthal said. “We showed up, the cousins showed up, the brothers showed up, and we’d been there for about an hour … And we started looking at our watches and wondered, ‘Where are [my in-laws] Kent and Lyla?”

As it turned out, the in-laws had arrived and started to unpack… in the wrong house. “The next door was open, and they had stumbled in and dropped off all their stuff. When they looked up, they saw an entirely different family sitting in the living room who were not us,” Blumenthal said. “We had the best laugh ever. We hung out with the other family. We couldn’t believe it. It was one of those moments– wrong place, wrong time–that we laughed about for the rest of the week.”

For Blumenthal’s family, it was simply a harmless mistake that resulted in a good laugh and a few new friends. But the producer could only imagine what might have happened if those strangers had been a little less kind. “, I thought, ‘Can you imagine if Kent and Lyla walked into the wrong Airbnb and something else was happening, something they shouldn’t see, something nobody should?'” From there, Blumenthal hired screenwriter Robbie Fox (Jackass Forever, Playing for Keeps) to execute the idea in a screenplay, and the rest is history.

So there you have it. Always be sure to double-check your Airbnb address before you unpack!