Christopher McQuarrie finds new movie star to throw out of planes: Denzel Washington

Per Deadline, the new untitled film probably won’t follow the Mission: Impossible edict of building a story around cool set pieces and figuring the script out on the fly. Instead, it will have a much more grounded premise, akin to McQuarrie’s earlier small-scale crime stories. Washington will star as a former cop serving a life sentence, released early after a brain cancer diagnosis gives him six months to live. Amid making amends with his estranged daughter and new grandson, his past comes back to haunt him. While that doesn’t sound like the do-your-own-stunts mayhem of Mission: Impossible, Washington is no slouch in the action department. He supplemented his Oscar-nominated turns in Fences, Roman J. Israel, Esq., and The Tragedy Of Macbeth with all those Equalizer movies. So, at least he’s down to kill a couple of guys with a credit card.