Vulture reports that Denzel Washington is in talks to star in “Safe House,” a thriller based on a spec script by US magazine editor David Guggenheim that was a subject of bidding war that was won by Universal earlier this year.
The film, described as a mix between “Collateral” and “Three Days of the Condor,” “follows a young U.S. intelligence agent who must go on the run with a newly arrived prisoner after his titular safe house comes under attack.” According to Deadline, who miraculously credited Vulture with the story, Chris Pine, who co-stars with Washington in the upcoming film “Unstoppable” met with the studio about playing the agent, but will not be taking the role.
One of the reasons we’re interested? Deadline’s claim that the film is to be helmed by Daniel Espinosa, the director of the Swedish film, “Snabba Cash”. And mind you, we actually haven’t seen this 2010 film, but it’s apparently all the rage in Hollywood at the moment. So much so that Espinosa was one of the original directors in discussions for “X-Men: First Class” before Matthew Vaughn signed on. Espinosa’s name has also come up in connection with Aaron Guzikowski’s heavily-buzzed script “Prisoners” with Leonardo DiCaprio (though Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and Mark Wahlberg and seemingly every male lead in Tinseltown has been interested at one point, it was that hot) as well as the Steven Soderbergh-produced “Making Jack Falcone” which has Benicio Del Toro attached to star.
All this makes us extremely interested in “Snabba Cash” and Espinosa to see what the fuss is all about (side note: we really hope someone makes “Prisoners”).
As an interesting footnote, Washington’s longtime agent at WME, the legendary Ed Limato, passed away over the weekend and the company CEOs Ari Emmanuel and Patrick Whitesell are eager to prove to the actor that they can still command big bucks, and decent projects. So will Universal, who recently did another shuffle to their release date schedule and are weathering two years of expensive flops, take another risk with another big star, big budget film? Washington, who can still command a $20 million fee per picture, won’t come cheap.