As of right now all we’ve seen from Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer is the above picture of Denzel Washington in the lead role as he reteams with his Training Day director to play a man described as a solitary, monastic figure who hates injustice and devotes himself to helping people who are being victimized. With a no-nonsense attitude, compassion and experience with dealing with a wide variety of situations he’s a powerful and useful detective.
However, test audiences have seen early cuts of the film and are apparently loving it to the point The Wrap reports Sony has already put Richard Wenk to work scripting a sequel to the film, which is set to hit theaters on September 26.
Directors such as Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) and Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) were on and then off the picture with Refn telling the Los Angeles Times he’d “rather make a good movie that breaks even than a bad movie that makes money” before adding, “Let’s put it like this: There’s a reason why I pulled out.”
Well, if the test scores are indicative of anything perhaps it will make money, but will we see the reason Refn pulled out?
Meanwhile, Patrick Hughes is set to have his Hollywood coming out party with The Expendables 3 (8/15) after directing the Australian thriller Red Hill and now Screen Gems has signed the director up to remake Gareth Evans‘ The Raid.
The script was written by Brad Inglesby (Out of the Furnace) and The Wrap reports Liam and Chris Hemsworth are among those being considered for lead roles.
The original film centered on an Indonesian S.W.A.T. team tasked with storming a building where a violent gangster and his thugs reign over innocent residents. One young cop has a mission of his own – to rescue his drug-dealing brother from the chaos inside.
The sequel, The Raid 2: Berandal. is set to hit theaters on March 28 and while I have a screening set up to see it this week I may have to skip it as the 143-minute running time doesn’t appeal to me and neither did the first film.
