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‘Equalizer’ Update: Chloe Moretz Getting Lead in Film And Creator Michael Sloan To Write New Novels Based On Iconic Character

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Friday May 10, 2013 @ 7:24am PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Chloe Moretz, Denzel Washington, Michael Sloan, The Equalizer, Thomas Dunne Books
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: A couple of intriguing developments have happened on The Equalizer. After a strong reading with Denzel Washington, Chloe Moretz is getting the offer from Sony Pictures to play the female lead in the drama that will re-team Training Day tandem Washington and Antoine Fuqua. At the same time, Michael Sloan, creator of the 1980s TV series, has made a deal to write an original novel for Thomas Dunne Books that will continue the adventures of Robert McCall, the shadowy character originated by Edward Woodward who’ll be played on the big screen by Washington.

Moretz is a surprise choice to play the role of Teri, in that the role was originally drawn for a twentysomething. After Moretz did a chemistry reading with Washington, he was very impressed as was everybody else, and the role will be redrawn for Moretz to play a young prostitute, reminiscent of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Deal has to be made, but between this and the upcoming Kimberly Peirce-directed Carrie, that little girl from Kick-Ass is turning into a young woman who’s taking on some of the edgiest roles in town. READ MORE »

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CinemaCon: Universal’s Sequel Machine Pays Off With Exhibitors

By PETE HAMMOND | Tuesday April 16, 2013 @ 3:05pm PDTTags: Adam Fogelson, Battleship, Big Deals Film, Denzel Washington, Despicable Me 2, Fast & Furious 6, Kick-Ass 2, Mark Wahlberg, Ron Meyer, Ted, Universal, Vin Diesel
Pete Hammond

It was Universal Pictures’ turn in the spotlight this morning as Chairman Adam Fogelson served up a look at the studio’s sequel-packed summer slate and a summary of the studio’s 2012 hits and even big miss Battleship. He announced sequels in … Read More »

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Hot Trailer: Denzel Washington In ’2 Guns’

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Friday March 29, 2013 @ 12:34pm PDTTags: 2 Guns, Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg

Universal’s 2 Guns is directed by Baltasar Kormákur from a script by Blake Masters. The action thriller stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as two undercover federal operatives from competing bureaus who are forced on the run together. Pic opens in theaters August 2nd:

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Antoine Fuqua Eyes ‘Training Day’ Re-Team With Denzel Washington In ‘The Equalizer’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday March 21, 2013 @ 10:30am PDTTags: Antoine Fuqua, Big Deals Film, Denzel Washington, Sony Pictures, The Equalizer
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: On the eve of the opening of his latest film Olympus Has Fallen, director Antoine Fuqua is in early talks to re-team with his Training Day star Denzel Washington on The Equalizer for Sony Pictures and Escape Artists. That is the film that has had a lot of helmers chasing after the script by Richard Wenk prompted the studio to expedite Washington’s deal and set a late spring start date, likely in Boston. The film is a smartly budgeted thriller based on the TV series that will come in around $50 million and is designed to launch the first franchise for Washington, who’s coming off an Oscar-nominated turn in Flight.

Fuqua directed Washington to an Academy Award for Best Actor in Training Day for his portrayal of a crooked cop who creates havoc for a recruit (Ethan Hawke) he’s supposed to be training to join an elite undercover force. It was a full out badass performance, and Fuqua and Washington have been looking to work together ever since. This certainly seems like a strong fit for the helmer whose recent films have included Brooklyn’s Finest and Shooter. Read More »

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Rupert Wyatt Steps Away From ‘The Equalizer’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday March 5, 2013 @ 1:05pm PSTTags: Denzel Washington, Rupert Wyatt, Sony Pictures, The Equalizer
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Rise of the Planet Of the Apes helmer Rupert Wyatt broke off talks to direct The Equalizer at Sony with Denzel Washington. He had another obligation and skeds ultimately didn’t mesh, I’m told. Sony and Escape Artists will lock in a helmer shortly.

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OSCARS: Nominees Lunch Spreads Good Vibes As Balloting Is Set To Begin This Week

By PETE HAMMOND | Tuesday February 5, 2013 @ 2:49am PSTTags: Denzel Washington, Kathleen Kennedy, Oscars, Robert De Niro
Pete Hammond

Unquestionably one of the highlights of any awards season is the feel-good, everyone’s-still-a-winner Oscar Nominees Luncheon, which was held Monday at the Beverly Hilton. Academy Award nominees gather together and get to meet each other in a pressure-free zone — except for the huge press turnout to cover their arrivals (there are also press conference-style interviews and poolside one-on-one opportunities for TV cameras afterwards for some of the higher-profile nominees). Basically all they have to do is report to the risers set up in the Hilton’s International Ballroom as their name is called for the big group photo of the Oscar Class of 2012.

Related: 85th Academy Awards Nominees Photo

This year, rather than going alphabetically, the Academy summoned nominees by the table number they were sitting at. The table where I was lucky enough to be invited happened to be No. 1, smack dab in front of those risers, and so nominees Denzel Washington (Best Actor, Flight), producer Kathleen Kennedy (Lincoln), costume designer Colleen Atwood (Snow White And The Huntsman), and Makeup and Hairstyling contender Howard Berger (Hitchcock) were first to be called and had to stand the longest before the shot was taken. Actually, the roll call was bookended with longtime colleagues Kennedy — who was first up — and Lincoln director Steven Spielberg, who was dead-last (just after 9-year-old Best Actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis, who got a rip-roaring reception when her name was announced).

Overall, 16 of the acting nominees (excluding Emmanuelle Riva, Alan Arkin and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and four of the directors (Michael Haneke is directing an opera in Europe) were in attendance, along with approximately 140 others who showed up and really seemed to have a good time at the annual affair, where the nominees also get their official certificate and a sweatshirt. Another acting contender, Daniel Day-Lewis came down with the flu and was very disappointed he couldn’t make it I am told. Like Day-Lewis, I also heard Quentin Tarantino was really bummed he couldn’t attend due to a bout with the flu. Seems to be rampant these days. Read More »

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OSCARS Q&A: ‘Flight’ Scribe John Gatins

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Saturday December 22, 2012 @ 8:53am PSTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, John Gatins, Oscars, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

FlightOne of the intriguing parts of the Oscar race for me is watching excellent movies, and then discovering how much adversity, disappointment and years go into them. Whether you’re even nominated, this part of awards season is a validation of the artists’ struggle, offering encouragement to others trying not to give up on their own passion projects. I’m not sure anyone in this race personifies that more than Flight scribe John Gatins. You can look at Flight and marvel at Denzel Washington’s performance or how much movie Robert Zemeckis put onscreen with only a $30 million budget. But the most compelling back story is Gatins, who wrote a script that fit no studio’s template of a make-able movie, particularly with Gatins’ insistence he direct it. Gatins became a successful writer after acting didn’t pan out. His only directing credit, Dreamer, was a family film about a broken race horse, the furthest thing from an R-rated drama about a coke-snorting drunk commercial airline pilot. It was inevitable that a decade of futility would leave Gatins feeling a bit like Ahab chasing the white whale. But here, Gatins bagged his white whale, even if the price was letting someone else be captain.

DEADLINE: Pulling a jet liner out of a dive by flying upside down seems crazy, but there is a knowing voice that informs the substance abuse struggles of Denzel Washington’s pilot. How long did you struggle with that?
GATINS: It was one of those things where you go to college, and get a mulligan for four years to go through stuff and sort things out. If after those four years the party doesn’t end, that’s when it becomes an issue. I was one of those guys who couldn’t leave the party. I moved to Los Angeles after I graduated from Vassar, and tried to sort it out for myself but just never really could. There were a few really dark years there, and some strained relationships with family and friends. I had lots of people worried about me, until I was able to…

DEADLINE: Pull out of the nosedive, so to speak.
GATINS: Yes.

DEADLINE: How did you come up with this movie?
GATINS: I was in Europe, working as a script doctor on Behind Enemy Lines. These naval pilots, very intense guys, told such great stories. Sobriety changed what had been a distaste for flying into a real fear, because I didn’t have a coping mechanism anymore when I was in the air. The Yankees and Mets were playing in the World Series, and I had to get back to see a game. I found myself in this plane sitting next to a pilot who just started telling me all these crazy stories and everything that was going wrong in his life. I’m pretty friendly, but sitting there on this plane, I didn’t want to know that the wife hates you and you’re going through an awful divorce and you’ve got a bad addiction, you’re an alcoholic. And then I had that “wait a second, what if?” moment. Let’s say you had this pilot with an addiction issue, and put him in a plane and there was one of those horrific perfect storm scenarios. Every pilot explained to me that in order for a plane to crash from pilot error, a really crazy series of things would have to happen because they have backup systems for every crisis. I thought, if I can put him in a situation like that, where he has to do some amazing feat of flying, and then later it’s revealed he was loaded, how would we feel about that guy and his heroic act? And what about his own self-appraisal when the media wants to hoist him up as a hero? I wanted to explore the life of this alcoholic faker, trying to convince himself he’s something that’s he’s not. Read More »

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OSCARS: How ‘Flight’ Got Off The Ground

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday December 12, 2012 @ 8:00pm PSTTags: Awardsline, Denzel Washington, Flight, Oscars, Robert Zemeckis

Diane Haithman is an AwardsLine contributor.

One thing’s for certain about Flight: The Robert Zemeckis-directed drama starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot will never be a popular in-flight film. “After this movie, people are going to be waiting out on the steps for the pilot with a Breathalyzer test,” Washington recently joked in an interview.

Flight screenwriter John Gatins also does not recommend his story for in-flight reading. “I’ve gotten emails from people saying:, ‘Man, I made the mistake of opening your screenplay on a plane’”, Gatins says with a laugh. His fictional concept is not too far from recent fact: In 2009, not one, but two pilots were arrested preflight at London’s Heathrow Airport after failing Breathalyzer tests. Both planes, one American Airlines and one United, were coincidentally headed for Chicago.

Related: OSCARS: Handicapping Lead Actor Race Read More »

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OSCARS Q&A: Denzel Washington

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday November 21, 2012 @ 7:58pm PSTTags: Awardsline, Denzel Washington, Flight, Oscars

Diane Haithman is an AwardsLine contributor.

With a lean budget of $30 million, Flight is an action film that could not afford a big movie star like Denzel Washington. Then again, this morally ambivalent character study of an alcoholic pilot flying under the influence couldn’t afford not to have a big movie star like Denzel Washington if it had a shot at getting made at all. Washington, 57, sat down with AwardsLine to talk about how and why he got involved, and how the numbers added up to make the role of troubled Captain Whip Whitaker a gamble worth taking.

AwardsLine: Industry observers have said this film wouldn’t have been made without you. It has so many of what Hollywood would call negatives — it’s both an action film and a character study, and that character is not a straight-up hero, he’s an alcoholic.
Denzel Washington: It was not a struggle to get it made, but the studio wanted to do it for a price, and we ended up with (about) $28 million, and (director) Robert Zemeckis made it look like $100 million, especially the plane sequence. So he and I threw our money back in the pot, took a tenth of our salaries. Read More »

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Budweiser Disappointed By Brand’s Portrayal In ‘Flight’: Reports

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Tuesday November 6, 2012 @ 4:44am PSTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, Paramount

Denzel Washington Flight BudweiserBudweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch has reportedly asked Paramount to obscure all images of its flagship beer in the Robert Zemeckis movie Flight. In the drama, Denzel Washington plays an airline pilot accused of drinking before captaining a plane. It includes scenes showing Washington consuming alcoholic beverages, including Budweiser and assorted vodka brands. The well-reviewed film opened #2 this weekend with $25M. Now, according to wire reports, Budweiser VP Robert McCarthy has penned a letter to Zemeckis’ Image Movers and to Paramount saying Anheuser-Busch had “no knowledge of the use or portrayal of Budweiser” before or during the film’s production and were not contacted by the studio. “We would never condone the misuse of our products, and have a long history of promoting responsible drinking and preventing drunk driving. It is disappointing that Image Movers, the production company, and Paramount chose to use one of our brands in this manner,” McCarthy said in the letter. “We have asked the studio to obscure the Budweiser trademark in current digital copies of the movie and on all subsequent adaptations of the film, including DVD, On Demand, streaming and additional prints not yet distributed to theaters.” Read More »

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Paramount Taking Box Office Success ‘Flight’ Directly To Academy Voters; Film Is Dedicated To Ed Limato

By PETE HAMMOND | Sunday November 4, 2012 @ 11:54am PSTTags: Big Deals Film, Denzel Washington, Flight, Paramount, Robert Zemeckis
Pete Hammond

EXCLUSIVE: With an estimated $25 million boxoffice haul on only 1900 screens (see Nikki’s boxoffice report) in its opening weekend, Paramount’s gamble on the $30 million adult drama Flight looks like it is paying off. That’s certainly sweet news for star Denzel Washington and director Robert … Read More »

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‘Flight’ Crash Sequence Effects: Video

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Saturday November 3, 2012 @ 5:48pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, Robert Zemeckis

Visual effects supervisor Keith Baillie of Atomic Fiction explains how filmmakers created the Flight crash sequence. The Robert Zemeckis movie starring Denzel Washington as a troubled pilot opened Friday and is expected to bring in an estimated $23.6 million this weekend.

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Hot Clip: ‘Flight’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Friday October 19, 2012 @ 4:04pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight
Mike Fleming

The Robert Zemeckis-directed Flight with Denzel Washington made its premiere as the closing night film of the New York Film Festival last Sunday. Washington plays a commercial airline pilot with a drinking and substance abuse problem that comes to light after executing a landing that would have … Read More »

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Paramount’s Oscar Hopeful Takes ‘Flight’ With Bi-Coastal Interactive Launch — Minus Denzel Washington

By PETE HAMMOND | Monday October 15, 2012 @ 9:26pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, John Gatins, Paramount Pictures, Robert Zemeckis
Pete Hammond

Paramount, expanding ways to reach awards voters, got interactive Monday with a bi-coastal launch of its Oscar-bait drama Flight, including a special screening and Q&A in New York beamed to four Arclight theaters in the Los Angeles area and another in San Francisco for invited guild members and press. Taking place the day after the film’s world premiere as the closing-night attraction of the 50th New York Film Festival, director Robert Zemeckis, writer John Gatins and several cast members including John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, and Melissa Leo took part in the interactive post-screening Q&A that featured tweeted questions from the California venues and live queries from the NY crowd — many industry-voter types. Paramount clearly found a nice way to expand its Big Apple premiere, and it went off almost without a hitch. Almost.

The only downer for the studio was jettisoning the scheduled appearance of Flight star Denzel Washington, who was in attendance for the premiere Sunday night. He “was taken ill” according to the announcement at the outset of the Q&A, followed by audible groans from the audience. For the money being spent on this, as well as its awards launch, losing Denzel had to be a big disappointment for the studio. Still, the rest of this digital-age awards event went off without a hitch with premium network Epix teaming with Paramount to stage the interactive, multi-city event.

Other companies have begun doing this sort of thing including The Weinstein Company, which staged a couple of live interactive events like this last year with Meryl Streep among others. But the major studios, more bottom-line-oriented and not usually on the front lines of new Oscar campaign techniques, are suddenly jumping on board if recent activity is an indication. Last week, Disney/DreamWorks staged a “Conversation With Steven Spielberg And Daniel Day Lewis” following a nine-city screening of Lincoln at which audience members (mostly students) in those cities were able to text questions to the same AMC Lincoln (appropiate name) Plaza theatre that hosted today’s Flight screening. In the past, most awards-season guild screening Q&As (and they number in the hundreds) were simply for the audience that showed up and not usually even taped. Read More »

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Hot Trailer: ‘Flight’

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday October 11, 2012 @ 12:07pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, New York Film Festival, Paramount Pictures, Robert Zemeckis

Paramount‘s Flight stars Denzel Washington as a hero airline pilot with a secret and is Robert Zemeckis’ first live-action film in more than a decade. John Goodman, Melissa Leo and Don Cheadle co-star in the movie, written by John Gatins. The studio is positioning this one for an … Read More »

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Universal Sets Scribe For Potential ‘Safe House’ Sequel

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday September 5, 2012 @ 6:05pm PDTTags: Big Deals Film, David Guggenheim, Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Safe House, Universal
Mike Fleming

Universal has hired scribe David Guggenheim to try drafting a sequel to Safe House, the hit drama that Daniel Espinosa directed with Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. It’s far from a sure thing, as Washington isn’t really a sequels guy. … Read More »

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Hammond On Tony Scott: An Appreciation

By PETE HAMMOND | Monday August 20, 2012 @ 3:32am PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Ridley Scott, Scott Free Productions, Tom Cruise, Tony Scott, Top Gun, Unstoppable
Pete Hammond

It is doubly sad and ironic that action movie maestro Tony Scott would apparently choose to end his life by jumping from a bridge. This is the kind of scene you would more likely see because he was calling the shots from behind the camera – … Read More »

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NYFF Lands Robert Zemeckis’ ‘Flight’ As Closing Night Film

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday August 9, 2012 @ 12:13pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, New York Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

New York, NY, August 8, 2012 – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Robert Zemeckis’s FLIGHT will make its World Premiere as the Closing Night film for the upcoming 50th New York Film

… Read More »

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Sony Pictures Sets April 8 Start For Denzel Washington To Play ‘The Equalizer’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday July 23, 2012 @ 6:24pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Sony Pictures
Mike Fleming

The hot project on the Sony Pictures lot right now is The Equalizer, after a script by Richard Wenk prompted the studio to expedite Denzel Washington’s deal and set an April 8 start date, likely in Boston. … Read More »

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