By Mike Fleming Jr | Deadline Hollywood
The Film That Lit My Fuse is a Deadline video series that aims to provide an antidote to grim headlines about industry uncertainty by swinging the conversation back to the creative ambitions, formative influences and inspirations of some of today’s great screen artists.
Every installment asks the same five questions. Today’s subject is Antoine Fuqua, who transitioned from videos to commercials to become an A-list director of action films and dramas. His breakout hit was Training Day, which won Denzel Washington an Oscar and led to a long collaboration between them and also Washington’s co-star Ethan Hawke. He followed with The Replacement Killers, Southpaw, Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, Shooter, Brooklyn’s Finest, Olympus Has Fallen, The Magnificent Seven and documentaries including What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali and the Suge Knight docu American Dream/American Knightmare. He is in post on the Mark Wahlberg-starrer Infinite, and he and Will Smith are set for Emancipation, based on the story of a runaway slave named Peter, a photo of whose scarred back galvanized resistance to slavery in the U.S. The drama is right now being auctioned at Virtual Cannes and the bidding is well above $75 million for the film.