Denzel Washington And Christopher McQuarrie Team On New Thriller At United Artists And Amazon MGM Studios — SkimNews
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- United Artists and Amazon MGM Studios greenlit the untitled thriller, marking a return to the crime genre for McQuarrie after a decade directing four Mission: Impossible films, most recently The Final Reckoning.
- Washington slotted into the role after pre-production halted on Antoine Fuqua's Netflix epic about Carthaginian general Hannibal due to budgetary issues — freeing him to take meetings with McQuarrie and give the project the thumbs-up.
- Scott Barkan and Gregg Zehentner penned the script, which follows a former detective serving a life sentence who receives compassionate release after a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and reconnects with an estranged daughter and a grandson he never knew.
- Heather McQuarrie, Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt (United Artists), Joseph Restaino (Hungry Bull), Reza Moheet and Norman Aladjem (Mainstay Entertainment), Katia Washington, and Tommy Harper will produce, with casting underway for the daughter role.
- Washington's near-term slate also includes Netflix's The Take (formerly Here Comes the Flood) opposite Robert Pattinson and Daisy Edgar-Jones, slated for 2027, and a Broadway run in Othello with Jake Gyllenhaal.
- Stuber's United Artists already has a loaded 2027 pipeline in production or post-production: Lizard Music (Dwayne Johnson/Benny Safdie), a new Highlander with Henry Cavill, Michael Mann's Heat 2 with Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale, and The Mandela Catalogue with Amblin.
- The film lands a theatrical bow on October 1, 2027, underscoring Amazon MGM's continued commitment to premium cinema even as Washington remains active across streaming, stage, and screen.
Why it matters: The greenlight converts a streaming project's collapse into a theatrical tentpole: Netflix's budget-halved Hannibal freed Washington for a United Artists film that slots directly into Stuber and Amazon MGM's 2027 slate alongside Heat 2 and the new Highlander. For McQuarrie, the project marks his first non-Mission: Impossible directing job in roughly ten years and a deliberate return to crime-thriller territory.
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