Possibly sick of spending the last 15 years as “The Training Day guy” no matter how many times he tries to make The Equalizer a going concern, director Antoine Fuqua is finally steering into the skid. Fuqua announced today that he’s teaming up with Jerry Bruckheimer and Warner Bros. TV for a TV adaptation of the 2001 Oscar-winning film. Fuqua will executive produce the series and most likely direct the pilot, establishing a visual tone for all the subsequent scenes where a roguish older cop gets his younger partner high on angel dust, or “Ashy Larry” as it’s known on the sketch-comedy streets.
The original film starred Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington, the latter of whom won an Oscar for his role as increasingly deranged LAPD detective Alonzo Harris. Deadline is reporting that the new series, which will take a slower approach to the steadily worsening relationship between the two detectives, might change up the racial balance of the lead parts, with a young, black rookie coming under the questionable mentorship of a jaded white cop. The pilot will be written by Will Beall, a former LAPD detective who penned the script for 2013’s Gangster Squad and who’s previously tackled odd-couple police procedurals—albeit ones with fewer guns being placed against people’s heads—as an executive story editor for Castle.
Fuqua, meanwhile, continues to work steadily in film; he’s currently making The Magnificent Seven with Hawke and Washington, and his boxing drama Southpaw came out just a few weeks ago. He was previously in talks for another TV project, an adaptation of Andy McNab’s Nick Stone books, but it’s unclear whether that’s still going forward in light of the new show.