THE EQUALIZER (also in IMAX)
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus has Fallen)
Cast: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, with Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo
In The Equalizer, Denzel Washington plays McCall, a former black ops commando who has faked his death to live a quiet life in Boston. When he comes out of his self-imposed retirement to rescue a young girl, Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz), he finds himself face to face with ultra-violent Russian gangsters. As he serves vengeance against those who brutalize the helpless, McCall’s desire for justice is reawakened. If someone has a problem, the odds are stacked against them, and they have nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.
Based on the Television Series created by: Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim
In The Equalizer, Denzel Washington plays
McCall, a man who believes he has put his mysterious past behind him to lead a
quiet life in peace. But when McCall meets Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young
girl under the control of ultra-violent Russian gangsters, he can’t stand idly
by – he has to help her. Armed with hidden skills that allow him to serve
vengeance against anyone who would brutalize the helpless, McCall comes out of
his self-imposed retirement and finds his desire for justice reawakened. If
someone has a problem, if the odds are stacked against them, if they have
nowhere else to turn, McCall will help. He is The Equalizer.
Columbia
Pictures presents in association with LStar Capital and Village Roadshow
Pictures an Escape Artists / Zhiv / Mace Neufeld production, The Equalizer. Starring Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas,
Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, with Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Based on the television series created by
Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim.
Produced by Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Denzel Washington, Alex
Siskin, Steve Tisch, Mace Neufeld, Tony Eldridge, and Michael Sloan. Executive producers are Ezra Swerdlow, David
Bloomfield, and Ben Waisbren. Director
of Photography is Mauro Fiore, ASC.
Production Designer is Naomi Shohan.
Editor is John Refoua, ACE.
Costume Designer is David Robinson.
Music by Harry Gregson-Williams.
ABOUT THE EQUALIZER
For Denzel Washington, the force that
drives Robert McCall – the character he plays in the action-thriller The Equalizer – is an innate sense of
justice. “Robert McCall has done a lot
of bad things in his past, and he’s trying to get beyond that – he’s not proud
of his past, and he’s trying to do better,” Washington explains. After leaving that past behind to lead a quiet
life, he finds that desire for justice reawakened when a young girl – abandoned
by the rest of the world – needs his help. “He didn’t like himself – he never lost his skills,
he made a conscious decision to put that behind him. It’s when he meets an innocent young girl who
is being abused, that he decides to do something about it.”
“McCall’s motivation is simple,”
says Todd Black, a producer of the film.
“When there is an injustice to an ordinary person, someone who can’t
defend themselves, because they’re not capable or they don’t even know where to
start, he will take care of it – violently or nonviolently.”
For director Antoine Fuqua – who
re-teams with Washington after directing the actor to his Oscar®-winning
performance in Training Day – McCall
shares some of the archetypical heroic traits that have been passed down. “I saw this movie as a throwback, like the
westerns that Sergio Leone made,” he explains.
“There’s an antihero, in a struggle, reluctant and ashamed to pick up
his gun... but when he gets a chance to help other people, he does. He uses his skills for that.”
“We’d all like to believe that
there’s a guy out there who could help us, if only we could find him,” says
producer Jason Blumenthal. “If somehow
we could reply to an ad on the Internet, desperately pleading for help when no
one else would take that call. I’d like
to believe that in my hour of need, somebody out there would listen to me –
somebody would drop everything and help me, just because. And that’s the
Equalizer.”
The film takes its title from the
1980s television series and shares its central premise – a man, highly trained,
who can “equalize” the odds when they are stacked against the helpless. Though the filmmakers took only the premise
and title from the original show, Blumenthal says that the premise is one that
has only become more relevant. “The word ‘equalizer’ is a very strong, powerful
word,” he notes. “A lot of people
believe that there’s a lot of imbalance in the world, so the idea of creating a
balance – equalizing something – is very meaningful. If anything, I think that title means more
now, in 2014, than it did in the 1980s.
People can get behind this kind of hero: a man who does heroic acts for
the people who need them the most.”
With that in mind, the project was
tailored especially for Washington by screenwriter Richard Wenk, who got the
job once the producers saw his understanding of the character’s sense of right
and wrong. “I would write an origin
story – one that didn’t exist in the television show,” says Wenk. “I could keep McCall a mystery, and that gave
me the freedom to re-envision this character.”
“Richard’s script is like a stick
of dynamite,” says Fuqua. “It’s always
interesting to watch the wick. It’s
sparkly and interesting – and you know that sooner or later, it’s going to
blow.”
For Chloë Grace Moretz, who would
join the cast as Teri – the young girl who McCall is inspired to help – it’s
easy to see that the role is perfect for Washington. “He’s so Denzel
in the way he does his job,” she says, “McCall can be the most sweet, charming
guy, with a huge smile on his face – and the next minute, he’s a killer, and
you’re thinking, ‘WHOA! That happened
quickly!’”
Fuqua says that one of the
hallmarks of the character in Wenk’s screenplay is improvisation. “McCall doesn’t carry a gun – that’s a part
of his past,” says the director. “He comes in and scans a room in two
seconds. He’ll know exactly what’s to
your left, what’s to your right – and he’ll use any of those things that he
needs to stop you in your tracks. He
takes what you have and uses it against you.
He doesn’t kill you from a distance – he’s in your face and watching the
light go out of your eyes. That’s a
different kind of human being. You’ll
never look at a corkscrew the same way again, I can promise you that!”
The idea for that corkscrew – one
of the more memorable and grisly moments in one of the film’s key fight
sequences – came directly from Fuqua. “I met with a friend of mine, who is familiar with this world,” he
explains. “I told him that the fight was set in a bar area, and he laid
out all of the different things in a bar, and said, ‘These are the things that
would be useful to me.’ He picked up the corkscrew and showed me what he
had in mind.”
Washington had sparked to the
concept and set the ball rolling on the screenplay, but all agreed that there
would be no commitment until the script was in.
Three days after giving Washington the script, the producers were on
pins and needles, waiting to hear back, when Black’s phone rang. “It’s Denzel on the other end,” he
remembers. “‘Todd,’ he says, ‘this is
Robert McCall.’”
In his role as a producer, Washington
worked with Wenk to realize the role he wanted to play. He says they kept asking the basic questions
– “Who is he? What makes him tick? What are his flaws? What is he trying to get over? I think that long ago, he started out as a
man who wanted to help people, and it turned into something else. He had to put that all behind him, to shut the
door. And this young innocent opens that
door again.”
In seeking out a director, Washington
was excited to be re-teaming with Fuqua.
After their experience together on Training
Day, Fuqua says, it was clear that The
Equalizer lent itself to a good match of actor and director. “Part of what I discovered in Training Day is that I can read
something on the page that sounds like an action piece, and I know that Denzel
will see the acting in that – he can take an action beat and create great
drama, as if it’s a dialogue scene,” says Fuqua. “He’s unpredictable, in the best way possible
– he’s in his world, and you’re a fly on the wall, to capture it, if you can be
smart enough to know when to continue in the scene.”
Similarly, Washington felt great
confidence in his director. “He’s very
talented,” says the actor. “We sent him
the material and he responded – we sat down and he had tons of ideas – and it
was a done deal.” Later, on set, that
confidence paid off. “Antoine had the
vision for the film – he was doing close work with specialized cameras, all of
that stuff. But I never worried about
any of that. The camera is Antoine’s
area of expertise – I don’t have to worry about that. I just worry about the acting,” he smiles.
“We had a rhythm and an understanding,”
says Fuqua. “There were times when we
didn’t need to talk; we both knew where each other was going.”
Since Training Day, Fuqua and Washington have had several opportunities
to re-team, but The Equalizer is the
first that actually brought them back together.
“We didn’t force it,” says Blumenthal.
“It wasn’t ‘Let’s get the guys that did Training Day together.’
That’s not a reason to make a movie.
I think Antoine was looking to make a movie where he could get back into
character and really understand what makes a person tick. You can only build a great character if
you’ve got an unbelievable actor, and of course, we had Denzel. So the challenge then became finding a
character that Denzel could sink into and a world that Antoine could bring to
life.”
ABOUT THE SUPPORTING CAST
Chloë Grace Moretz leads the
supporting cast as Teri, a young girl who has been forced into a life of
intimidation and terror. After meeting
with McCall, her story will reawaken in him a desire for justice.
“When I first heard that the character is a prostitute I
thought that it would be a Taxi Driver type of role – pushing
the boundaries a bit,” she says. “But I was surprised. The role
doesn't glorify prostitution nor make it cotton-candy. You never see her
in the actual act of prostitution. The focus isn't on her profession but who
she is as a person. You see that there is still a spark in her eye and that she
yearns for something greater and if she can get out of this scary world, she
could go on to a normal life. That’s what I loved about the character –
this inner hope that was built into her story.”
Moretz says that inner hope is the
basis of the bond that Teri forms with McCall.
“He sees this
dream in her,” she says. “It’s like there are two panes of glass – you
have this terrified little girl, and right in front of it, a girl who’s been
thrust into a terrifying world, putting on the face of a total badass to
survive.”
Washington says that Teri, too, has
a gift for looking beyond that first pane of glass. “She’s in the business of reading men –
whether it’s a natural gift or she’s developed it through her profession,”
Washington says. “Not to say she sees
right through him, but she can see the pain, she can see the hurt.”
“The first time of meeting him, she cracks his code,” says
Moretz. “She looks him right in the eyes. She notices his OCD tics
– turning his book a hundred times, moving his stuff around. But it’s
incredibly charming to her, to see someone who cares so much about things, when
everyone around her is just going through the motions.”
Once she had the role, Moretz
researched the character’s background.
“There are girls who have been brought into rings from all over – from
Russia, from Scandinavia,” she says. “I
went to an amazing organization called Children of the Night – girls from all
over America call a hotline number and they’re off the streets and in a home
that cares for them. I didn’t want to
exploit these girls – I’m an actor portraying a role – but as a girl, I wanted
to understand. Meeting those girls not
only helped me to be Teri truthfully and show who she is, but it allowed me, as
a 16-year-old girl, to feel grateful and to put a spotlight on the
organization.”
But for McCall, it’s not just about
saving Teri – his actions will lead him into the heart of the Russian
mafia. Actor Marton Csokas took on the
role of Teddy, the gangster overseeing the ring. “I liked the challenge of playing the
villain,” he says. “I’ve played villains
before – even a Russian villain – and you don’t want to repeat yourself. So if I could find ways to come at it from
left field, a little more obscurely, and work that into the raw material, then
we would come up with something intriguing.
It was fun.”
Csokas says that Wenk gave the
character “really strong anchor points and information that allows you to leap
into all kinds of different directions.
The strongest idea that I tried to maintain is the sociopathic aspect –
no conscience, the absence of love, glib in feeling, not really caring what
other people think from a moral perspective.
These ideas are good to be able to thread into the character.” This is what sets Teddy in opposition to
McCall – where Teddy is incapable of caring about other people, McCall cares so
much that he is drawn back into a life that he had sworn he had left behind.
To adopt Teddy’s unique accent,
Csokas again looked internal. “I didn’t
want to give him a stereotypical Russian accent,” he explains. “People from Russia who learn English all
speak very differently. So I imagined he
had spent time in England – more than likely London – and I experimented with
the Cockney accent. Remember, he’s a
sociopath, so he can be anything to anybody, and sociopaths are notoriously
good mimics.”
Actor David Harbour plays Frank
Masters, a corrupt cop with the Boston police.
“He’s working with the Russian mob, the Irish mob, other mobs. He gets a lot of money from them,” says
Harbour. When McCall begins his takedown
of the people harming Teri, Masters becomes the minder for Teddy – the man
brought in to protect the mob’s assets at any cost. “Masters becomes not only a foil for McCall,
but a foil for Teddy, because Masters has a very different idea about how to
approach getting someone. He knows
Boston very well – it’s his home – and he has an antagonistic relationship with
this person coming in and trying to tell him what to do.”
Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo take
on the roles of Brian and Susan Plummer, a married couple from McCall’s
past. “They’re the only functioning
male-female relationship in McCall’s life,” Pullman notes. On creating that relationship with Leo, he
says, “It’s a pleasure to create a relationship of 20-plus years – you get a
chance to be in an open, generous frame of mind.”
Brian Plummer, he says, “is an
old-money type. Richard Wenk had met one
of these fellows in the South of France – one of these erudite, old-money
people who are constantly being employed by the government for their amazing
acumen about specific areas of knowledge of foreign relations.” In Pullman’s
imagination, it’s in that role that Plummer met his wife – though her role was
decidedly out of the think tank offices and on the front lines.
Leo, who won the Oscar® for her
role in The Fighter, says that like
McCall, they are supposed to have retired. “Brian and Susan Plummer have
retreated from that world,” she says.
“And we suddenly get brought back into play, once Robert McCall comes to
our door.”
Leo says that the relationship
between Susan Plummer and McCall goes so deep that often, nothing needs to be
said. “In their world, nothing is ever
casual. There are always things not
being said, and they’ve both been trained and have worked for many years to be
able to read signals from people, to literally read their thoughts from their
behaviors. So when McCall shows up, he’d
like to think that she doesn’t know what’s going on with him, but she must have
a pretty good idea that she’s in some pretty big trouble.”
What, exactly, was their
relationship, in McCall’s former life?
“It’s not explained, what their history is together,” she says. “It’s left to the imagination. But in the imagination, the question isn’t
‘What did they do together,’ but ‘What didn’t
they do together?’”
Of her on-screen husband, Bill Pullman,
Leo remembers, “Bill was kind enough to give me a call in my hotel room after
we both arrived,” Leo remembers. “We
walked around the park, had a cup of coffee together – we didn’t really talk
about the script or the characters, just got to know one another a little
bit. From that conversation, I got a
sense of him, his experience, how stage was his beginning, and I put that into
the pot of how Susan might feel about Brian.”
Strangely enough, years ago, Leo
played a supporting role in an episode of “The Equalizer” television
series. Memory is fleeting, but YouTube
is forever.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
To realize the
action of The Equalizer, the
conversations began between Fuqua, Washington, and Keith Woulard, one of the
film’s stunt coordinators. “There’s a
tendency in shooting action to shake the camera and move things around – the
audience can’t tell what’s happening,” says Fuqua. That’s just what they didn’t want to do. “My goal was to take acting and make it
action,” says Fuqua.
Fuqua’s
inspiration for the way he would shoot the action scenes with McCall was
inspired by his interaction with real-life boxers. “I happen to have a very good friend who’s a
great boxer – Sugar Ray Leonard,” he notes.
“He’ll tell stories, and you’ll realize how smart a boxer can be. Sometimes they’ll touch you – hey, how you
doin’ today? – and that’s their way of checking you out, seeing if you’re in
shape, if they think you’re a threat. Or
they’re watching you a certain way, to see how you move, how your body language
is, what your strengths and weaknesses are.
They can pick you apart. McCall
is trained that way, too – he notices these things and uses them to his
advantage. We had to show that.”
The next step was
to slow it down. “When we first did the
scene in the bar office, it was quick – really fast. I said, ‘It should be fast, but it should be
personal. Let’s slow it down, let’s look
at it like it was a scene of dialogue, so I can still see him as a character
within all of this movement. How would
that be done, where it’s Denzel doing what he does?”
It was also
important to Fuqua that the scenes be realistic. “We asked ourselves, Can it really
happen? Can you really physically do
these things? What happens to a human
being who is capable of doing that? And
it turns out for most people, ordinary people, it’s not possible – you get into a car
accident, your heart beats faster, you panic. For people like McCall, though, it’s just the
opposite. Their heart rate slows down. The breathing slows down. Everything around
them slows down. Their pupils open up to
let in more light. It’s all really
happening as they assess a room in seconds.
And then, when they have it all figured out, they go into action.”
For Woulard, as a
stunt coordinator, the process began by breaking down the script into its individual
set pieces. “We talked to Denzel and
Antoine about what they wanted to do,” he says.
“In this particular case, Denzel didn’t want to do a lot of martial
arts-type of fighting – he wanted straight, street, slick, creative
fighting. And Antoine, of course,
agreed.” Woulard brought his own
experience in the military, including Special Forces, in creating the fights
for the film.
For this
particular film, it was imperative that the stunt team work closely with
Washington and create action that the actor could perform himself. “We set up all of the action facing us. You see Denzel maybe 95% of the time,”
Woulard notes. “So, about a month before
we started shooting, I started training him – and we trained every day.”
Training was
imperative, as the character is highly trained and an expert. “If you’re holding a knife in a knife fight
with the blade sticking out, anybody who knows their stuff will say, ‘OK,
you’re going to get the drop on this guy really quick,’” Woulard says. “But if that knife is turned and the blade is
running down the palm of his hand, and his holding it like he’s boxing, well,
that’s a guy who’s got some experience.”
One thing that
sets Robert McCall apart is that he does not use a gun – he uses his
environment, whatever is at hand, against his opponents. “There could be an ashtray on the table, a
letter opener on the desk,” Woulard continues.
“There could be a vase, a fork, a cup, a book. And when he’s fighting in Home Mart, he’s on
his home turf – he can gather things up and combine them.”
In that way, the
specific action of The Equalizer
doesn’t end with the stunts – it cuts across all aspects of filmmaking,
including photography and production design.
“Antoine was the one to come up with the idea of Equalizer-vision, if you will,” says producer Todd Black. “It was completely Antoine’s idea from the
beginning, from the first meeting. We
brought him back together with Mauro Fiore, the director of photography, who
he’d worked with on Training Day and
won the Academy Award® for Avatar, and Naomi Shohan, his production designer on
Training Day, and the three of them
worked out this idea.”
“When we hired Naomi
for this movie, she said, ‘It must reek of realism. You must feel like Robert McCall could live
right next door. When you walk into Home
Mart, it must feel like that kind of store,’” Black continues. “But she also said, ‘Even though it’s real,
it doesn’t have to be gritty or dirty – it has to have a soul, it’s got to have
candlelight, it’s got to have warmth.
McCall has to have a warm soul, or he wouldn’t be The Equalizer.’”
Shohan says that
a large part of her challenge on the film was creating sets that would
carefully set up everything that McCall would need for the action sequences –
without giving the game away – and then paying off that setup in the action
sequences. “Set decorator Leslie Rollins
and his team studied very carefully – we talked about what would be interesting
for the fight scenes, and knowing that we needed to introduce those in the
beginning and reuse them later for the fight.”
Shohan also
created the diner set where Teri and McCall make their connection. “The idea was for the diner to have
wrap-around windows, to become a bowl of light in the darkness,” she
explains. “It was so hard to find that –
we looked all over the place. And then
we saw just what we were looking for – these amazing windows – but it was a
floor store. So we asked if we could
borrow it, and if it could be a diner for a while. We took everything out, we made a counter, we
changed the floor, we put in a fake tin ceiling. We hung the lights, and we painted it a color
that we hoped would seem a little murky and underwater, but also glow. We used the palette from the famous Hopper
painting, which has a similar wall color and a feeling of green, and a red
counter. It’s not a novel idea, but it
worked well – it looked like it was stuck in time, a place that hadn’t changed
since the 1940s.”
ABOUT THE MUSIC
To create the
score, Fuqua turned to composer Harry Gregson-Williams. “The creative process always starts with
character – and McCall is the central character in this film,” he says. “Once I’d uncovered what made him tick, the
path I took was to get behind his eyes.
When he walks into a dangerous situation, the camera comes close to his
face, and you look deep into his eyes – in fact, you see a reflection of what
he’s seeing.”
As a result, the
score – like the rest of the film – follows a realistic approach. “Because Antoine wanted the action to be
believable, the score had to be rooted in reality, too. We couldn’t have French horns announcing the
hero. There’s quite a dark tinge to his
theme. But I learned quite early on that
to bring darkness to a scene, it’s necessary to have a little ray of light
somewhere, so that the contrast is evident.
I took a two-pronged attack with McCall’s music – one followed his
action, which was bold, strong, and noisy, and one avenue that was quite
sensitive.”
As McCall
explodes into action, Gregson-Williams’ score does the same. The composer notes that the audience isn’t
necessarily aware that the tension is building.
“You’re just following Denzel’s character – he’s aware that something’s
up before the audience is,” he says.
“The music kind of creeps up on you, and when McCall bursts into action,
the music follows suit.
Those scenes are
balanced by the scenes with Teri. “There’s
a very fragile, raw quality to Chloë’s performance, so I used a very simple
piano melody, surrounded by quite thin sounds,” he explains. “It was important not to over-score – not to
push the emotion. We held back and let
the audience discover the relationship as it comes.”
For Teddy’s
theme, Gregson-Williams took an unusual approach. “He’s the bad guy, but I looked at his
character. He’s wearing these beautiful,
expensive suits – he’s the best-dressed guy in the movie. He arrives on a private jet. The guy’s not short of a dime or two. He’s not just a thug, he’s quite refined –
it’s only as you discover more about him that you realize he is a base and
nasty piece of work. So I was able to
give him a theme that was refined.”
ABOUT THE CAST
Two-time Academy Award®-winning actor DENZEL WASHINGTON (Robert McCall / Producer)
is a man constantly on the move. Never
comfortable repeating himself or his successes, Washington always searches for
new challenges through his numerous and varied film and stage portrayals. From Trip, an embittered runaway slave in Glory, to South African freedom fighter
Steven Biko in Cry Freedom; from
Shakespeare's tragic historical figure Richard
III, from the rogue detective, Alonzo in Training Day, to his most recent critically acclaimed performance
as the addicted airline pilot Whip Whitaker in Flight, Washington has amazed and entertained audiences with a rich
array of characters distinctly his own.
Last summer, the
talented actor starred in 2 Guns,
opposite Mark Wahlberg. Other recent
films starring Washington are the thriller Safe
House, which was the number one box office hit the weekend it debuted in
February 2012. He also starred in Unstoppable,
with Chris Pine, Book Of Eli, a
movie where he also served as a producer, and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, opposite John Travolta and James
Gandolfini.
In addition, Washington starred in Ridley
Scott’s American Gangster with
Russell Crowe, Spike Lee’s Inside Man,
with Clive Owen and Jodie Foster, Tony Scott’s Déjà Vu, and Man on Fire.
Other movies from this time frame are Jonathan Demme’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate where
Washington played the role made famous by Frank Sinatra, and Carl Franklin’s Out Of
Time with Eva Mendez.
In 2002, Washington
marked his directorial debut with Antwone
Fisher. Based on a true-life story about a troubled young sailor as he
comes to terms with his past, the film won critical praise, was awarded the
Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild of America, and won an NAACP
Award for Outstanding Motion Picture and Outstanding Supporting Actor for
Washington.
Washington’s
next film as director was The Great
Debaters, a drama based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, a professor
at Wiley College in Texas who inspired students from the school’s debate team
to challenge Harvard in the national championship in 1935. Washington also
co-starred in the film with Academy
Award®-winning actor Forest Whitaker and introduced upcoming young
actors Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Denzel Whitaker who have gone on
to have successful careers.
During the 1990s,
Washington starred in Jerry Bruckheimer’s box-office sensation Remember the Titans, and Norman
Jewison’s The Hurricane, where he
received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and an Academy Award® nomination
for his portrayal of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the world middleweight champion
boxer during the 1960s who was wrongfully imprisoned twice for the murder of
three whites in a New Jersey bar on June 17, 1966.
Another critically acclaimed performance was
Washington’s portrayal of Malcolm X in director Spike Lee's biographical epic, Malcolm X. Monumental in scope and filmed over a period
of six months in the United States and Africa, Malcolm X was hailed by critics and audiences alike as one of the
best films of 1992. For his portrayal, Washington received a number of
accolades including an Academy Award® nomination for Best Actor.
Other notable Washington films include John Q, with Halle Berry, Phillip
Noyce’s The Bone Collector, opposite
Angelina Jolie, Fallen, Spike Lee’s He’s Got Game, Ed Zwick’s The Siege, Penny Marshall’s The Preacher’s Wife with Whitney
Houston, Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide
opposite Gene Hackman, Virtuosity,
Courage Under Fire and Devil in a
Blue Dress. He also starred in Kenneth
Branagh's film adaptation of Much Ado
About Nothing, Jonathan Demme's controversial Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and The
Pelican Brief, opposite Julia Roberts.
Washington's professional theater career began
with Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park and was quickly followed by numerous
off-Broadway productions, including “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men”; “When The
Chickens Came Home to Roost” (in which he portrayed Malcolm X); “One Tiger to a
Hill”; “Man and Superman”; “Othello”; and “A Soldier's Play,” for which he won an Obie Award. He also
appeared in the Broadway production of “Checkmates” and “Richard III,” which
was part of the 1990 free Shakespeare in the Park series hosted by Joseph
Papp's Public Theatre in New York City.
In 2005, Washington returned to
Broadway as Marcus Brutus in the critically acclaimed production of “Julius
Caesar.” More recently, when he appeared opposite Viola Davis in a 14-week run
of August Wilson’s “Fences” in 2010, his powerful performance earned him his
first Tony Award. He recently returned to Broadway in a new production of
Lorraine Hansbury’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” which won the Tony Award for Best
Revival of a Play.
Washington was 'discovered' by Hollywood when he
was cast in 1979, in the television film “Flesh and Blood.” But it was his award-winning performance on
stage in “A Soldier's Play” that captured the attention of the producers for
the television series, “St. Elsewhere,” who
cast him as Dr. Phillip Chandler in the
long-running series.
In 1982, Washington re-created his role from “A
Soldier's Play” in Norman Jewison's motion picture A Soldier's Story.
Washington went on to star in Sidney Lumet's Power, Richard Attenborough's Cry
Freedom for which he received his first Oscar® nomination, For Queen and Country, The Mighty Quinn, Heart Condition, Glory,
for which he won the Academy Award® for Best Supporting
Actor and Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues. Washington also starred in the action
adventure film, Ricochet, and in Mira
Nair's bittersweet comedy, Mississippi
Masala.
In addition to his accomplishments
on screen, Washington took on a very different type of role in 2000. He produced the HBO documentary “Half Past
Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks,” which was subsequently nominated
for two Emmy Awards. Also, he served as
executive producer on “Hank Aaron: Chasing The Dream,” a biographical
documentary for TBS, which was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Additionally, Washington's
narration of “John Henry” for a children’s album was nominated for a 1996
Grammy Award in the category of Best Spoken
Word Album for Children. He also was awarded the 1996 NAACP Image Award for his
performance in the animated children's special “Happily Ever After:
Rumpelstiltskin.”
MARTON CSOKAS (Teddy), pronounced ‘choh-kash,’ has established a
prolific career in both film and theater. His feature credits include
David Mackenzie’s Asylum with Natasha
Richardson and Ian McKellen; Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Supremacy opposite Matt Damon; Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; Christine Jeffs’ Rain; and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring and Best Picture Oscar® winner The
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Csokas’ performance in Richard
Roxburgh’s Romulus, My Father, with
Eric Bana and Franka Potente, earned him the Australian Film Institute (AFI)
Award and the Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards. His recent film
work includes playing Alice’s father in Tim Burton’s blockbuster Alice in Wonderland; Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree with Charlotte Gainsbourg; Yann
Samuell’s L’âge De Raison (Age of Reason)
with Sophie Marceau; Shirley Barrett’s South
Solitary with Miranda Otto; Jim Sheridan's Dream House with Daniel Craig; Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; and
John Madden’s The Debt with Helen
Mirren and Jessica Chastain.
On stage, he most recently played
Orsino opposite Rebecca Hall in Sir Peter Hall’s staging of “Twelfth Night” at
the National Theatre in London. He has previously starred in productions of
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Belvoir St. Theatre, which garnered
him a Sydney Theatre Award nomination for Best Actor in 2007; “Arcadia”;
“Julius Caesar”; and “Angels in America”, all with the Auckland Theatre Co. For
Theatre for a New Audience in New York, he starred in “Antony and Cleopatra,”
and at New York Theatre Workshop, he starred in the award-winning staging of
Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes.”
Csokas was recently seen in Marc
Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and
Darren Aronofsky’s Noah; he will soon
be seen in Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City 2.
He also starred in the Discovery Channel’s miniseries, “Klondike,” executive
produced by Ridley Scott. Csokas just completed shooting the History
Channel miniseries “Sons of Liberty.”
CHLOË GRACE MORETZ (Teri) has
been captivating audiences since she was five years old, when she booked a lead
role in Michael Bay's remake of The
Amityville Horror, opposite Ryan Reynolds.
In September, Moretz begins production
on the sci-fi action film The Fifth Wave,
starring in the lead role of Cassie Sullivan.
Based on the popular novel, the film is scheduled for release in early
2016. The same month she will be seen in
the drama If I Stay from director
R.J. Cutler, and, in the fall, with Charlize Theron in “Dark Places” an
adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best-selling thriller.
On the stage, Moretz recently made
her debut in Scott Z. Burns off-Broadway play “The Library,” directed by
Oscar®-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.
Last year, Moretz starred as Carrie
White in the remake of the cult classic “Carrie,” alongside Julianne Moore; and
reprised her role as fan favorite Hit-Girl in “Kick Ass 2," the sequel to
Matthew Vaughn’s cult-classic film, Kick-Ass.”Her breakout role as ‘Hit-Girl’
in “Kick-Ass,” followed by a starring role in Matt Reeves’ remake of “Let Me
In,” landed her on TIME Magazine’s prestigious Top 10 Performances of the Year
list, as well as, the New York Times Best Performances of 2010 list.
Moretz also starred with Sir Ben
Kingsley in Martin Scorsese’s critically acclaimed “Hugo,” which garnered 11
Oscar nominations. This was followed by a leading role in Tim Burton’s “Dark
Shadows,” alongside Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeffier. Among her other credits
are “500 Days of Summer,” "Laggies," and Oliver Assayas’ “Clouds of
Sils Maria.”
DAVID HARBOUR (Masters) has
gained a reputation as a performer as facile in film and television as he is on
stage. He recently completed a Broadway
run opposite Al Pacino in “Glengarry Glen Ross” and was nominated for a Tony
Award for his performance in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.”
Harbour appeared in the ensemble
film Parkland and will next be seen
in A Walk Among the Tombstones,
opposite Liam Neeson. He has co-starred
in many films, including End of Watch,
Revolutionary Road, Thin Ice, Brokeback Mountain, The Green Hornet, Quantum of
Solace, W.E., and Between Us.
Harbour was a series regular on the FOX series “Rake,” opposite Greg Kinnear. Other television credits include recurring
roles on HBO’s “The Newsroom” and “Pan Am.”
A New York native, Harbour
graduated from Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York, just north of New
York City. In 1977, he graduated from
Dartmouth College with a double major in drama and Italian. He soon impressed theatrical critics and
audiences alike, appearing in Lanford Wilson’s “Fifth of July,” and in such
Broadway productions as “The Merchant of Venice,” also opposite Al Pacino, and
Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love” and
“The Coast of Utopia,” at Lincoln Center Theater.
BILL
PULLMAN (Brian Plummer) is widely known for his iconic film roles, which
include credits in David Lynch’s noir-horror film Lost Highway, Roland
Emmerich’s Independence Day,
and the skeptical brother, Jack Callaghan, in While You Were Sleeping. More recently, Pullman starred in NBC’s
family comedy, “1600 Penn”, as
President Dale Gilchrist.
His more recent feature film roles include
co-starring in May in the Summer,
which debuted at this year’s past Sundance Film Festival. He also is the subject of the documentary The Fruit Hunters, directed by Yung
Chang.
Pullman’s theater work includes “The Jacksonian”
from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Beth Henley (“Crimes of the Heart”), the Broadway revival of David
Mamet’s “Oleanna,” opposite Julia Stiles, the Broadway premiere of Edward
Albee’s “The Goat,” where he earned a Drama Desk nomination, and the New York
premiere of Albee’s “Peter & Jerry,” which
earned him another Drama Desk nomination for his performance. This fall, Pullman will be starring in the David Rabe play “Sticks and
Bones” produced by The New Group.
Last fall, Pullman recreated his
original role in “The Jacksonian” for
the play’s New York premiere. Directed by Tony Award winner Robert Falls, this
production featured the original cast of Ed Harris, Glenne Headly and Amy
Madigan as well as Pullman. “The Jacksonian” was first produced at the Geffen
Playhouse in 2012.
Other noteworthy credits
include Pullman directing and producing the TNT movie “The Virginian,” which won the Wrangler Award for Best
Picture in 2000. He also starred in the
miniseries “Torchwood” as well as
HBO’s “Too Big To Fail” for director Curtis Hanson.
MELISSA LEO (Susan Plummer) received an Academy Award®, Golden Globe and SAG Award for her
tour de force performance in The Fighter. She also received Oscar® and SAG nominations
for her starring role in Frozen River,
for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead and a
Spotlight Award from the National Board of Review, among countless other
accolades.
Leo shared a Best Ensemble acting
award from the Phoenix Film Critics Society for her outstanding work in 21 Grams, opposite Benicio del Toro and
Sean Penn. Her more recent films include Conviction, opposite Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell, Welcome to the Rileys, opposite
James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart, Red
State, written and directed by Kevin Smith, Seven Days in Utopia, opposite Robert Duvall, and Flight, opposite Denzel Washington. Other notable film work includes The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,
in which she starred opposite Dwight Yoakam and Tommy Lee Jones, and Hide and Seek, in which she starred
opposite Robert De Niro.
In 2013, Leo appeared in Antoine
Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen, Warner
Bros.’ Prisoners with Hugh Jackman
and Jake Gyllenhaal, and Universal's Oblivion
with Tom Cruise.
For television, Leo won a 2013 Primetime
Emmy for her guest work on FX's “Louie.”
She was previously nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a
Miniseries for her starring role opposite Kate Winslet in HBO’s “Mildred
Pierce,” which was directed by Todd Haynes. Leo’s other television credits
include the current HBO series “Tremé” from executive producer David Simon; she
is also known for her groundbreaking portrayal of Detective Kay Howard on
“Homicide: Life on the Street.”
Leo studied drama at Mount View
Theatre School in London, England, and later at the SUNY Purchase Acting
Program.
ABOUT
THE FILMMAKERS
ANTOINE FUQUA (Director) is one of the most sought-after filmmakers of his generation,
effortlessly blending action and character-driven storytelling.
Most recently,
Fuqua released the box-office hit Olympus Has Fallen, starring
Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, and Morgan Freeman. Previously, he directed Brooklyn’s
Finest, with Richard Gere
and Don Cheadle; Shooter, with
Mark Wahlberg; the international hit King Arthur, starring Clive
Owen, Keira Knightley and Joel Edgerton; the acclaimed blues documentary
Lightning in a Bottle, executive produced by Martin Scorsese; Tears of
the Sun, with Bruce Willis; and his first feature, The
Replacement Killers, which was
-Chow Yun Fat’s English film debut. Fuqua’s critically
acclaimed drama Training Day earned an Academy Award® for
Denzel Washington for Best Actor, and a nomination for Best Supporting Actor
for Ethan Hawke.
Up next,
Fuqua helmed Showtime’s documentary “Suge
Knight” and he is currently in production on Southpaw for The
Weinstein Company, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Fuqua is also
a highly regarded commercial and music video director having worked with such
brands as Nike, Armani, and Pirelli and earning numerous awards for his music
videos. Deeply passionate about giving back to his community through
filmmaking, and inspired by his own upbringing, Fuqua is deeply supportive
of underprivileged youth in the community.
Fuqua
currently resides in LA with his family.
RICHARD WENK
(Screenwriter) wrote the screenplay for The
Mechanic, starring Jason Statham and Ben Foster, and the Bruce Willis
action film 16 Blocks, directed by
Richard Donner. His upcoming projects
include The Lake, an original action
thriller for director Luc Besson, and the sequel to The Equalizer, currently in development at Columbia Pictures.
Wenk also is a director. He wrote and directed the comedy, Just the Ticket, starring Andy Garcia
and Andie MacDowell. He marked his
feature directorial debut with Vamp from
his original screenplay.
MICHAEL SLOAN (Based on the Television Series Created By/Producer) has written and produced over 300 hours
of prime time television, including the TV series “The Equalizer,” which he also created with Richard
Lindheim. In addition, he wrote and produced the original “Battlestar
Galactica,” “Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew Mysteries,” new episodes of “Alfred
Hitchcock Presents,” the new “Outer Limits,” “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues,”
and “Mystery Woman,” the most successful series ever on the Hallmark
Channel. He was also the show runner on
“The Master,” another show he created, and “B.J. & the Bear.”
He has written and produced several
TV movies, including “Earthquake in New York,” “Freefall,” “Return of the Man
from U.N.C.L.E.,” “Riviera,” “Return of Sam McCloud,” and three hugely
successful “Return of the Six Million Dollar Man” and “The Bionic Woman” movies.
He has written and produced several features, including Moments, Max Havoc: Ring of Fire, Alien
Agent and Art of War II: Betrayal,
starring Wesley Snipes.
In addition, he wrote a stage play,
“Underground,” which played at the West End in London and starred the late
Raymond Burr.
With nearly four decades of television and technology
research experience, RICHARD
LINDHEIM (Based on the Television Series Created By / Producer) brings a unique perspective
to his work as Creative Partner of RL Leaders, LLC. Previous to RL Leaders,
LLC, Lindheim was Executive Director of the Institute for Creative Technologies
(ICT) at USC. During his successful tenure, Lindheim directed the institute
from inception to its status as a leader in computer science research.
Prior to the ICT, Lindheim spent seven years as
executive vice president of Paramount Television Group, where he was
responsible to exploring and developing new uses of television expertise for
entertainment. In this position, he launched Paramount Digital Entertainment.
Previously, he worked at Universal studios for 12 years as both a producer and senior
executive at Universal Television. During his tenure with
Universal, Lindheim co-created the popular Universal/CBS program "The
Equalizer" (1985-89) and served as an executive on many highly successful
television series such as "Murder She Wrote,"
"Columbo," "Miami Vice," and "Law and
Order."
Transitioning to Universal Studios from NBC, Lindheim
served as vice president, dramatic programs following a nine-year post as vice
president, program research for the network. A member of the Writers Guild of
America, Lindheim has written articles for Variety, Electronic Media,
Broadcasting, and other trade publications. He is the author of two textbooks
on television.
Born in Dallas and raised in
Los Angeles, TODD BLACK (Producer) attended the theatre program at the
University of Southern California. He began his entertainment career as a
casting associate. In 1995, Black became President of Motion Picture Production
at Sony's Mandalay Entertainment and managed such films as Donnie Brasco, Seven Years in
Tibet, I Know What You Did Last
Summer, Les Miserables and Wild Things.
In January 2001, Black, along
with his partner, Jason Blumenthal, merged with the Steve Tisch Company to form
Escape Artists, an independently financed company housed at Sony Pictures.
Their first produced movie was A Knight's
Tale, starring Heath Ledger.
Black's feature film credits
include The Pursuit Of Happyness and Seven Pounds, both starring Will Smith; The Taking Of Pelham 123, directed by
Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta; Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage and
directed by Alex Proyas; and Hope Springs,
starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. He was nominated for a Golden Globe
for Best Picture (Drama) for the Denzel Washington-directed The Great Debaters. In addition, Black
was honored with the Producer Guild's Stanley Kramer Award for The Great Debaters and for his 2002
film, Antwone Fisher, Denzel
Washington's directorial debut. His most recent project, Sex Tape, starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, hit theaters in
July.
Escape Artists is currently in
production on Unfinished Business,
starring Vince Vaughn.
JASON BLUMENTHAL (Producer) was born and raised in Los Angeles. He
graduated from Crossroads School for the Arts and attended Syracuse
University’s Newhouse School of Communications.
After graduation, Blumenthal joined Wizan/Black Films in 1990. There, he
was involved with the development and production of Iron Eagle II, Split
Decisions, The Guardian, Short Time, Class Act, Wrestling Ernest
Hemingway, Dunston Checks In, A Family Thing, and Bio Dome. They also executive produced Becoming Colette and Fire in
the Sky.
Blumenthal was Senior Vice
President of Feature Production at Mandalay Entertainment from the company’s
inception in 1995 through March of 1998. During his tenure as Senior Vice
President, he managed Mandalay’s production slate which included such films as The Fan, Donnie Brasco, Seven Years in
Tibet, Les Miserables, Wild Things, Gloria, and The Deep End of
the Ocean. One of Mandalay’s biggest box office successes was I Know What You Did Last Summer, which
went on to be #1 at the box office for three weeks and grossed more than $130
million worldwide, spawning the sequel, I
Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
In April 1998, Blumenthal and
his partner Todd Black formed Black & Blu Entertainment and entered into a
first look production deal at Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2001, Black &
Blu merged with the Steve Tisch Co. (producers of Forrest Gump) to become Escape Artists while still maintaining
their first look deal at Sony Pictures. Escape Artists has since produced A Knight’s Tale, starring Heath Ledger, and
Antwone Fisher, directed by and
starring Denzel Washington, which was released through Fox Searchlight. Before
the success of The Pursuit of Happyness,
which went on to gross more than $300 million worldwide, they produced The Weather Man directed by Gore Verbinski
and starring Nic Cage and Michael Caine.
Escape Artists also released the Alex Proyas thriller Knowing starring Nic Cage, Seven Pounds starring Will Smith, and The Taking of Pelham 123 directed by
Tony Scott, and starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. Among Escape
Artists’ more recent films is Hope
Springs, starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. Their most recent
project, Sex Tape, starring Cameron
Diaz and Jason Segel was released in July. Escape Artists is currently in
production on Unfinished Business starring Vince Vaughn.
DENZEL WASHINGTON (Producer/Robert McCall) Please see above
biography.
ALEX SISKIN (Producer) has been a producer at Sony Pictures since
1996. In his first decade at Sony, he was a partner with Sid Ganis at Out
of the Blue Entertainment, where they produced the Adam Sandler films Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds, and the Happy Madison projects Deuce Bigalow and Master of
Disguise.
Siskin began his film business
career at Amblin Entertainment in 1987, after graduating from UC Berkeley
and pursuing graduate studies in English literature. He worked on numerous
Amblin projects including Jurassic Park
and Schindler’s List.
In 1991, he worked at Witt-Thomas
Productions, before arriving at Sony.
STEVE TISCH (Producer) is a partner at
Escape Artists Productions and is the Chairman and Executive Vice President of
the New York Football Giants, the only person with both an Academy Award® and a
Super Bowl ring. Tisch won a Best Picture Oscar® as a producer of Forrest
Gump in 1994, and has
received two Super Bowl rings as Chairman of the Giants, who won Super Bowls
XLII and XLVI.
Tisch is one of the most successful producers in
the motion picture industry. Three decades ago he produced the sleeper hit, Risky Business, helping launch Tom
Cruise’s career. His more recent credits with Escape Artists include The
Pursuit of Happyness, The Weather Man, Seven Pounds, Knowing,
The Taking of Pelham 123, The Back-Up Plan, and Hope Springs.
Sex Tape, starring
Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, was released in July. Currently in production is Unfinished Business, directed by Ken
Scott and starring Vince Vaughn.
Tisch has been involved with the New York Giants since his
father, Preston Robert Tisch, purchased 50 percent of the franchise in 1991. In
2005, Steve was named Executive Vice President, and with the passing of his
father, he assumed the additional title of Chairman. Steve worked closely with
John Mara, President & CEO of the Giants, on the planning and construction
of MetLife Stadium, which was completed in the spring of 2010 and ranked as the
number one grossing stadium in the world in 2012. Tisch and Mara were named
Best NFL Owners by Forbes in 2011. Steve also helped win the successful bid to
bring Super Bowl XLVIII to MetLife Stadium in February 2014.
Tisch has long been a leader in the philanthropic sector and
generously contributes his time and resources to a variety of organizations
including The Epilepsy Foundation, Women’s Cancer Research Foundation and The
Simon Wiesenthal Center. He is a member of the Board of Advisors at the Tisch
School of the Arts at New York University and is on the Board of Trustees of
The Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles, The Sundance Institute, The Los Angeles
County Museum of Art and The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Cancer Center at Duke
University. He is the naming benefactor of the new sports and fitness
center at his alma mater, Tufts University.
MACE NEUFELD (Producer) is known as one of Hollywood’s most
successful and respected producers. His keen eye for talent and ability to turn
published works into box-office hits has helped launch the careers of Kevin
Costner and Alec Baldwin as well as directors Richard Donner, Roger Donaldson,
Phillip Noyce, and John McTiernan, among others. He has produced two of the
industry’s most successful film franchises, The
Omen trilogy and the four blockbusters based on the Jack Ryan series of
novels by Tom Clancy, which included The
Hunt for Red October, Clear and
Present Danger and The Sum of All
Fears. More recently, he produced Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner,
Kenneth Branagh and Keira Knightley.
His other film credits include the
hit crime thriller The General’s Daughter,
based on Nelson DeMille’s best-seller starring John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe,
and James Cromwell; the critically acclaimed No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman; Invictus, from director Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt
Damon; The Frisco Kid, starring Gene
Wilder and Harrison Ford; The Saint,
from director Phillip Noyce and starring Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue; the
psychological thriller Asylum,
starring Natasha Richardson and Sir Ian McKellen; and the adventure Sahara, based on the best-seller by
Clive Cussler starring Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, and Steve Zahn.
In 1976, Neufeld and Harvey
Bernhard produced the supernatural thriller The
Omen, starring Gregory Peck and directed by Richard Donner, which became an
international blockbuster and series of sequels for 20th Century Fox and
launched Neufeld’s career as a producer.
In 1989, Neufeld teamed with former
New World Entertainment head Robert G. Rehme to form Neufeld/Rehme Productions
and entered into an exclusive deal with Paramount. In the 1990s, the company
had a successful string of films that included Flight of the Intruder, starring Danny Glover; Beverly Hills Cop III, starring Eddie Murphy; and Necessary Roughness. In 1993, the team
of Neufeld/Rehme was voted ShoWest Producers of the Year and Showmen of the
Year by the Publicist’s Guild in 1994.
A native of New York and a graduate
of Yale University, Neufeld began his career as a manager, guiding the careers
of some of the most important talent in the entertainment industry at that
time, including: Don Adams (“Get Smart”); Don Knotts (“The Andy Griffith
Show”); Jay Ward (“Bullwinkle and His Friends”); Gabe Kaplan (“Welcome Back Kotter”);
and music legends Jim Croce, Randy Newman, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass,
and The Carpenters.
In the 1980s, Neufeld’s credits
include some of television’s most distinguished films including the Golden
Globe winning miniseries “East of Eden”, based on John Steinbeck’s
prize-winning novel and the pilot for “Cagney and Lacey”, which went on to
become an award winning and groundbreaking television series. He also served as
executive producer on the award winning miniseries “Death in California”
(starring Cheryl Ladd and Sam Elliott) and later presented the six-hour Turner
Pictures television film “Gettysburg”, which was the highest rated basic cable
miniseries to date.
A man of many interests, Neufeld is
also an accomplished photographer (his photograph of a returning WWII veteran,
entitled “Warriors Return” was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 and
was also voted Picture of the Year by the New York World Telegram-Sun). A
long-standing member of ASCAP, Neufeld collaborated with lyricist Robert Arthur
on material for such stars as Sammy Davis, Jr., Dorothy Loudon, and Betty
Clooney, and wrote numerous children’s songs, including the theme for the
“Heckle and Jeckle” animated series.
He has an outstanding collection of
primitive arts and holds a multi-engine instrument rating pilot’s license. He
has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute and a
mentor at the USC Ray Stark Producing Program.
Neufeld has been honored with
numerous awards including Producer of the Year Award from ShoWest, the Career
Achievement Award in Producing from the Palm Springs International Film
Festival, the Christopher Award, the National Board of Review Award, and the
Critics’ Choice Award, among others. He is the recipient of a prestigious star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Neufeld has been a supporter of
PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) for over a decade and was honored with a
2000 PATHMakers Award. He is a
passionate supporter of Stop Cancer and has served as a member on the Beverly
Hills Art Commission.
TONY ELDRIDGE (Producer) has been developing and producing feature
films and television movies for over fifteen years. His Lonetree Entertainment
production company controls or manages the film rights to over 50 literary
properties, including books by New York Times bestselling authors David
Fisher, Heather Graham, Michael Palmer and Jonathan Maberry, original
screenplays, and true life stories. He
has projects in development at HBO, Lionsgate, Landscape Entertainment and
Relativity Media and has worked with Tom Cruise, Nick Cage and Harvey
Weinstein. His next feature film, The War Magician, is based on the life
of Jasper Maskelyne, a charismatic stage magician who used illusion on a grand
scale to trick Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps, and in so doing, changed the course
of WWII and history.
MICHAEL SLOAN (Producer / Based on the Television Series Created
By) Please see above biography.
EZRA SWERDLOW (Executive Producer) has amassed a
distinguished production career that spans over the past thirty years, working
alongside such iconic directors as Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Mike
Nichols, Barry Levinson and Mel Brooks.
His most recent credits are Sony
Pictures’ CGI/ live-action hybrid movie The Smurfs 2, starring Hank Azaria and Neil Patrick
Harris; the feature film action-comedy adaptation of the popular 1980s TV
series, 21 Jump Street, starring Jonah
Hill and Channing Tatum; and Curtis Hanson’s critically acclaimed financial
docudrama “Too
Big To Fail,” starring William Hurt, Paul Giamatti and
Billy Crudup for HBO.
He also served as executive
producer on the horror comedy Zombieland,
starring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg, as well as
Disney’s classic Enchanted, starring
Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and James Marsden and Invincible, the story of Philadelphia Eagles’ underdog
Vince Papale, which starred Mark Wahlberg.
Swerdlow began his career in 1980,
serving as a unit manager on Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories. He spent the next few years working
in a variety of production capacities (including location manager, unit manager
and production manager) on such renowned films as Tootsie, Arthur and The
King of Comedy, before
earning his inaugural producing credit on Allen’s Radio Days.
His diverse portfolio clearly shows
that he’s not afraid of tackling different genres, such as the successful
adaptation of Terry McMillan’s bestseller Waiting to Exhale, which he not only produced but also
developed. He has also served as executive producer on such commercial and
critical hits as Wag The Dog, Head
Of State, The First Wives Club and Secret Window, starring Johnny Depp.
DAVID BLOOMFIELD (Executive
Producer) has been with Escape Artists for over 12 years and was recently
named a partner at the company.
Bloomfield has executive produced a
number of Escape Artists films, including Sex
Tape for Columbia Pictures, starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, The
Back-up Plan, starring Jennifer Lopez and Knowing with Nicolas
Cage.
Bloomfield is currently executive
producing the Escape Artists film Unfinished Business starring
Vince Vaughn for New Regency, and the upcoming Ends of the Earth starring
Jennifer Lawrence for The Weinstein Company.
Bloomfield also co-executive
produced Jason Reitman’s first feature Thank You for Smoking for
producer David Sacks. Prior to joining Escape Artists in 2000, Bloomfield
was a Senior Vice President at Spelling Entertainment.
Bloomfield started his career as an
attorney for Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. He is a graduate of New York
University School of Law.
BEN WAISBREN (Executive Producer) is Chairman and President of LSC Film Corporation, which co-finances major
motion pictures with Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. He is also an
attorney with the international law firm of Winston & Strawn, where he
advises clients in the U.S. and Europe in the media & entertainment and
finance sectors. His clients include independent production and
distribution companies, private equity firms, hedge funds, investment banks and
commercial banks.
Earlier in his career, Waisbren was a managing director and head of
investment banking restructuring at Salomon Brothers in New York, following a
legal career at a large Chicago law firm, Lord, Bissell & Brook, where he
led a national bankruptcy litigation practice.
Prior to joining Winston & Strawn in early 2013, Mr. Waisbren was the
President of Continental Entertainment Capital LP, a direct subsidiary of
Citigroup, with operations in New York, Los Angeles and Paris. Before that, he
was a managing director of a global hedge fund company, Stark Investments,
where he was a co-portfolio manager in the fixed income and private equity areas,
and responsible for investments in the feature film industry, and the formation
of the firm’s structured finance fund and a related, branded middle market
leveraged lender, Freeport Financial.
Waisbren served as a member of the Board of Directors of France’s Wild
Bunch, S.A., a pan-European motion picture production, distribution and sales
company, from 2005 until 2009, in connection with private equity investments
that he managed.
He was Executive Producer of Warner Bros. Pictures’ 300; Blood Diamond; V for Vendetta; Nancy Drew; The Good German; Poseidon; and The Assassination
of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford. In addition, he was Executive Producer of the following independent
studio releases: Cassandra’s Dream; First Born; Next; Bangkok Dangerous; and Gardener of Eden. He served
as an executive producer of Columbia Pictures’ 22 Jump Street and Sex Tape.
MAURO FIORE
(Director of Photography) was born November 17, 1964 in Marzi, Calabria, Italy
and moved in 1971 to Chicago, Illinois. He graduated in 1982 from Palatine High
School then continued on to Columbia College Chicago, earning his B.A. in 1987.
Fiore resides in California and Nebraska with his spouse Christine Vollmer and
their three children.
Fiore’s career began after moving to Hollywood with
longtime friend Janusz Kaminski and joining Corman productions in 1987. As
Kaminski rose to become Steven Spielberg’s director of photography, Fiore
assisted him as both gaffer and second-unit cinematographer.
Fiore continued to work alongside Kaminski as a
gaffer after Kaminski’s career began to take off when he became a director of
photography. Steven Spielberg discovered the pair after their work on Wildflower, and shortly after hired the
two men to shoot Schindler’s List.
These films led to Michael Bay’s hiring of Fiore in 1996 as second unit
director of photographer in The Rock,
then shortly followed by Armageddon.
In 2000, Kaminski hired Fiore as his director of
photography for his directorial debut, Lost
Souls. Through their recent successes, both men’s reputations and careers
quickly began to grow.
Director Antoine Fuqua, recognized Fiores
cinematography on the remake of the 70s classic Get Carter and offered him the opportunity to shoot Training Day, which proved to be his
breakthrough film. Fiore teamed up again with Fuqua in Tears of the Sun, then was offered Michael Bay’s The Island.
James Cameron hired Fiore for Avatar in 2009 after seeing his work in the jungle set films of Tears of the Sun and The Island. Immediately upon release,
Fiore was highly praised for his work, which he won the Academy Award for Best
Cinematographer, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, Florida Film Critics
Circle Award, Phoenix Film Critics Society Award, New York Film Critics Circle
Award (2nd Place) and was nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers
(ASC) Award, a BAFTA Award, British Society of Cinematographers Award, Chicago
Film Critics Association Award, and an Online Film Critics Society Award.
Over his career, Fiore has worked with directors such
as James Cameron, Michael Bay, and Steven Spielberg, and has shot many stars
over the years including Sigourney Weaver, Jamie Foxx, Bruce Willis, Liam
Neeson, Jessica Biel, Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke.
Early notable works of Fiore’s besides those listed
above include: The Hire: Ticker, Smokin’ Aces, and The Kingdom. He was also the director of photography on the TV
series “Tracey Takes On…” Fiore’s most notable recent work was Real Steel, and he is now currently
working on Runner, Runner and
Leningrad.
NAOMI SHOHAN (Production Designer), who previously collaborated with director Antoine Fuqua on Training Day, The Replacement Killers and Tears
of the Sun, reteams with him on The
Equalizer. Highly talented, Shohan
earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Production Design for her work on American Beauty, the Academy Award®
winner for Best Picture.
Her many other credits include The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, starring
Nicolas Cage, The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson,
I Am Legend, directed by Francis
Lawrence and starring Will Smith, Constantine,
also directed by Francis Lawrence, Sweet
November, Playing God, Feeling
Minnesota, and Zebrahead, among
others. Her work was most recently seen
in director Akiva Goldsman’s Winter’s
Tale, and will next be seen in the upcoming Robert Zemeckis film, The Walk, about Philippe Petit's
remarkable wire walk between the World Trade Center towers.
In addition to her work in feature
films, Shohan has designed sets for such made-for-television films as “The
Miraculous Year,” which was directed
by Kathryn Bigelow, as well as “Selma, Lord, Selma” and “Nightjohn,” both
directed by Charles Burnett.
JOHN REFOUA, ACE (Editor) was nominated for an Academy Award®,
a BAFTA, and an ACE Eddie for co-editing James Cameron’s blockbuster
Avatar. Refoua met Cameron while editing
the Fox television series, “Dark Angel,” and after the show's two-year run,
Cameron asked him to help finish the edit of Ghosts of the Abyss, the 3D IMAX documentary about the sinking of
the Titanic. They went on to co-edit Avatar, which took almost three years to
complete. The film won Refoua the
Critics’ Choice Award for Best Editing from the Broadcast Critics’ Association.
The Equalizer is Refoua's second collaboration with
director, Antoine Fuqua. Previously they
worked together on the hit Olympus Has
Fallen.
In addition, Refoua collaborated with Tom Lennon and Ben Garant, the
creators of “Reno 911!” He worked with
them on the first five seasons of the Comedy Central television series, and
edited their feature film, Reno 911!:
Miami, as well. They continued working together on their next feature, Balls of Fury. Refoua also worked on the comedy 21 and Over, written and directed by Jon
Lucas and Scott Moore, best known for writing The Hangover.
At age 19, Refoua graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in
economics. After a few years of travel
and work in the business world, he decided to pursue his passion for the arts
when a friend recommended editing.
DAVID ROBINSON (Costume Designer) has created the
wardrobe for such iconic films as Donnie
Brasco, Meet Joe Black, Pollock, and
Zoolander, among many others. More
recently, he designed the clothes for I
Love You Philip Morris, The Perks of
Being a Wallflower and the independent feature, Jimmy P., starring Benicio del Toro, which debuted at last year’s
Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. He
currently is working on Southpaw,
starring Jake Gyllenhall.
Robinson started his career on
Broadway, working as an assistant costumer on “The Phantom of the Opera.” His first feature film as a costume designer
was The Basketball Diaries, starring
Leonardo DiCaprio.
HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS (Music) is one of Hollywood’s most
sought after composers, whose scores span the spectrum of high-profile projects
from action to drama to animation – each infused with the emotional punch and
atmospheric intensity that mark his distinctive musical style. He worked
on all four installments of the blockbuster Shrek
franchise; garnered a BAFTA nomination for the score for the first Shrek; and received Golden Globe and
Grammy Award nominations for his score for Andrew Adamson’s The Chronicles
of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
His work was most recently
heard in Fox Searchlight’s thriller The
East, Total Recall starring Colin
Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and directed by Len Wiseman, the animated film Arthur Christmas, the action thriller Cowboys & Aliens directed by Jon
Favreau and the documentary Life in a Day.
He also wrote the theme for Prometheus
directed by Ridley Scott and for the drama Mister
Pip starring Hugh Laurie and directed by Andrew Adamson.
Gregson-Williams also scored the critically acclaimed The Town, marking his second collaboration with director Ben
Affleck. Gregson-Williams first worked with Affleck as the composer on
the Oscar®-nominated Gone Baby Gone.
He has also worked multiple times with other directors including Joel
Schumacher on the films Twelve, The Number 23, Veronica Guerin and Phone
Booth; and Tony Scott on Unstoppable,
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Déjà Vu, Domino, Man on Fire, Spy Game and Enemy of the State. The
Equalizer marks his second collaboration with director Antoine Fuqua having
previously worked together on The
Replacement Killers.
His long list of film
credits also includes Mike Newell’s Prince
of Persia: The Sands of Time; X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Adamson’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian;
Seraphim Falls; Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; Beeban Kidron’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason; Aardman’s animated smash Chicken Run; Return to Sender
and Smilla’s Sense of Snow, both for
director Bille August; and Antz.
Born in England to a musical
family, Gregson-Williams earned a music scholarship to St. John’s College,
Cambridge at the age of seven. By age 13, his singing had been featured
on more than a dozen recordings, and from there he moved to Stowe School as
their top music scholar and subsequently gained a coveted spot at London’s
Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Harry then turned his attention to
teaching, initially in Schools in England but later in Alexandria, Egypt. He
started his film career as assistant to composer Richard Harvey and later as
orchestrator and arranger for Stanley Myers, and then went on to compose his
first scores for director Nicolas Roeg. His subsequent collaboration and
friendship with composer Hans Zimmer resulted in Gregson-Williams providing
music for such films as The Rock, Armageddon and The Prince of Egypt and
helped launch his career in Hollywood.
Gregson-Williams has had the
distinction of receiving the Hollywood Composer of the Year Award from the
Hollywood Film Festival, as well as the Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding
Career Achievement from the BMI organization’s Film/Television Music Awards.
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