Director Antoine Fuqua Says THE EQUALIZER 3 Is an Unofficial Sequel to MAN ON FIRE
Denzel Washington is returning to one of his greatest film franchises with the upcoming movie The Equalizer 3. The long-awaited sequel will reunite Washington with past co-star Dakota Fanning. The pair appeared in the 2004 film Man on Fire together, and their reunion isn’t just a coincidence.
Director Antoine Fuqua spoke to ComicBook about the film’s stars, and why the upcoming third movie in the trilogy also functions as a sequel to 2004’s Man on Fire, directed by Tony Scott:
“We never talked about it collectively, but I’ve thought about it that way. You know when Dakota [Fanning] said she was interested I thought ‘Ah yeah! This is Man on Fire but years later – and this is what he’s doing,’ you know? But I never said that to them because they’re just in the characters [of Equalizer 3] in those moments. But when you see them together, man – when I saw them on set – it was just like…just smiling – I was just like ‘Yeah…’.”
In Man On Fire, Dakota Fanning played a little girl named Lupita Ramos, and Washington played a former CIA operative in Mexico City, hired to protect the girl and her family. When Lupita is kidnapped, he swears vengeance on those who has brought harm against the family he was hired to protect.
In this new film, Fanning is playing a character named Emma Collins. Not much is known about the character yet, but it seems as though she’s a government agent working with Washington’s character to take down a new wave of enemies.
The film’s synopsis reads:
“Since giving up his life as a government assassin, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) has struggled to reconcile the horrific things he’s done in the past and finds a strange solace in serving justice on behalf of the oppressed. Finding himself surprisingly at home in Southern Italy, he discovers his new friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends’ protector by taking on the mafia.”
The Equalizer 3 will be released in US theaters on September 1st.