While 2014’s The Equalizer was by no means an amazing piece of cinema, it was a violent tour-de-force of directing that more than managed to please action moviegoers. Star Denzel Washington was very much at home in the skin of Robert McCall, a retired black ops agent with violent tendencies, and helmer Antoine Fuqua skillfully found a balance between minimal story and hard-hitting action. Not many would’ve thought this was the film that would break Denzel Washington’s streak of never doing a sequel, but last year, it was confirmed that Washington would return for an Equalizer 2.

Not much has been said since then. Both Fuqua and Washington have been too hard at work on their latest collaboration, The Magnificent Seven, to say much, but now, thanks a report from Collider, we now have a bit more information on the sequel. While at a Q & A session with Equalizer 2 producer Todd Black, he gave an update for the film.

“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 went on to confirm that Fuqua would step back into the director’s chair, and that they even brought back the writer from the first Equalizer, Richard Wenk.

As mentioned above, one of the biggest shockers of this entire thing was that they were even able to get Washington back to reprise his role in the first place. Black stated:

“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.”

Let’s all hope that the Equalizer can indeed be Washington’s franchise.

The Equalizer 2 is officially slated theaters on September 29, 2017, but seeing how the producer stated the film is shooting next September, the film is likely going to fall on a September 2019 release date.

SOURCE: Collider