Over the last several years we have seen CGI technology progress to the point that it can do a remarkably good job making actors look significantly younger than they actually are. We tend to see the tech used in big blockbuster movies that already have a lot of digital effects, but it turns out that director Antoine Fuqua has been considering using the technology on Denzel Washington for the Equalizer franchise.
We meet Denzel Washington’s character Robert McCall in the first Equalizer movie after he has already retired from his professional life. While we get some information about who he was when he was younger, there’s still a lot that we don’t know about how he became the man he is. With The Equalizer 3 release date set for September, we're set to know how the story will end, but what about the beginning? Antoine Fuqua recently told NME that he is curious about McCall’s past, and he has even had conversations with the franchise screenwriter about what that story might be. He explained…
Especially now with the new technology and the AI and all of that kind of stuff… Is there a story to be told about how [McCall] became this person — the younger version? I've had that conversation with Richard Wenk [Equalizer series screenwriter] quite a bit.
Antoine Fuqua specifically talks about this idea as it pertains to using CGI to de-age the character, so he’s not considering hiring a younger actor to play a young McCall in a prequel movie. It’s actually a bit unclear just how Fuqua is considering using the tech. He says he “thought” about using the technology a lot, seemingly a reference to maybe using it in Equalizer 3, but he also says the idea is something he’s never discussed with Denzel Washington, which makes it sound like it might be an idea he’s considering for the future.
Of course, if Fuqua is actually considering an origin story movie, that’s quite a tall order. Such a project would likely mean de-aging Denzel Washington in every shot of the film, which is something we haven’t really seen before. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny de-aged Harrison Ford for a significant amount of the film's runtime, but even that was a small part of the total movie.
Whatever the director is thinking about, it’s clear that Antoine Fuqua doesn’t think that the de-aging technology is quite there yet. However, he’s clearly intrigued by the whole thing and says he is paying attention to where it all goes, so while we might not be there yet, maybe we will be soon. Fuqua continued…
It's all so fresh and new. I'm still watching [the technology]. I've watched Harrison Ford's film and I know there's other movies coming out... And I'm hearing the technology is getting better and better and better. So I'm kind of watching it to see where it goes.
The Equalizer 3 is supposed to be the end of this particular franchise. Having said that, if the movie makes a lot of money, there will almost certainly be a studio that would be happy to see more movies coming. So between that and improving technology maybe that origin story will happen one day.
