If you've not seen Denzel Washington's 2014 hit action thriller, The Equalizer, then you are definitely missing out. The film is based on the 1980s television series of the same name and centres on Robert McCall, a retired black-ops operative who tries to lead a normal, everyday life but cannot stand by when he sees injustice.
We have heard nothing from Sony about the film since last June, when the sequel was confirmed but in a recent Q&A session, Todd Black, producer of both The Equalizer and Denzel Washington's latest film, The Magnificent Seven, told Collider that the script is complete and shooting for the film will begin in September next year.
"The script is done. We start shooting right after Labor Day, maybe right before Labor Day depending on Denzel’s schedule. So Equalizer 2 will start shooting in September of next year, maybe earlier depending on another movie that we’re shooting with Denzel before that. We’re going to do a little bit more work and we’re going to go into casting right after that for his nemesis."
Black also confirmed that Antoine Fuqua would be back to direct the sequel, making this the fourth collaboration between Fuqua and Washington, and he also told of how this will be Denzel Washington's first foray into the world of franchises, which seem to be all the rage in Hollywood at the moment.
"It helps when you know him really well and you tell him at a nice expensive lunch that this could be his franchise. He’s always wanted to do a franchise, and he liked the Bourne movies, the earlier ones. I’ve had a friendship with him for 27 years and we’ve talked about him doing a franchise character, so when my partners and I got the rights to Equalizer, we were like, “Let’s get Denzel to finally do one. This could be the one.” It was never made as a movie and a lot of people didn’t know it was a TV show … but you’ve probably heard the title. He liked the title and I said to him, “Let us write it for you and if you like the script, great; if you don’t, we’ll go get another actor.” So he signed up for that and it worked."
Rumours of a sequel already existed, even before the first film hit the cinemas, but these rumours were pretty much solidified when the film, created with a relatively small budget of $55 million, made a huge $192 million at the worldwide box office.
It is still unknown whether co-stars Marton Csokas and Chloë Grace Moretz will return to play Nicolai Itchenko and Alina, a child prostitute who worked for the Russian Mafia. This question is particularly apt right now after the recent news that Moretz is dropping out of all of her future film commitments.
The film was originally scheduled for release on the 29th of September, 2017 but as the film will only going be into production from next September we have to assume that a new release date will eventually be announced, unless they can shoot, edit and release the movie within a few weeks. So, we will most likely not be seeing Robert McCall back in action until sometime in 2018.
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