Denzel Washington will revisit a movie character for the first time in his career, and he will do it in The Equalizer 2 on September 29, 2017. Hey, if you're going to make a sequel, then you could do much worse than choosing Sony's follow-up to their highest-rated test screening for an R-rated movie. The box office further supported the early reviews since The Equalizer grabbed nearly $200 million in ticket sales on a $55 million budget.
Antoine Fuqua's sleeper hit starred Washington as Robert McCall, a former CIA agent who was forced back into ruthless action when the Russian mob began threatening people he cared about. If you're feeling Taken vibes then you wouldn't be far off. Much like that franchise, the plan is to turn The Equalizer into a successful series of films. The studio started forward with this plan as early as February of last year, seven months before the film even hit theaters. Producer Todd Black confirmed as much when Steve interviewed him for the original film:
So Denzel is committed to the idea of a second movie at this point?
BLACK: You know, we’re all committed to do a second movie until there isn’t a second movie. I mean if it works and the audiences like it and it works critically and financially, I’m sure Sony and Denzel and all of us will want to do a second movie, but you never go into these thinking that because you never know. So you do have to satisfy certain questions that are necessary to answer in case there isn’t a second one, but you hope for a second one.
In that case does that change how Denzel deals with this organization? Like is this entire story going to deal with this organization or is this an organization that we can see pop up again?
BLACK: Very smart questions here. No, this story will end if we cut it – it’s funny, we can cut it two ways. It really depends – we can tell the tale in different ways. We can tell the tale with it being a standalone or we can tell the tale just the way it’s been constructed with it maybe coming back again.
Even after all of that, the sequel was only recently confirmed by Sony at CinemaCon. And now that it's got a release date, you can start getting really excited. Hat tip to @ERCboxoffice for the news:
