Another day, another Equalizer casting story. There was a time when the movie adaptation of the hoary '80s TV series seemed stuck forever in development hell, but with the arrival of Antoine Fuqua as director it's now steaming ahead, and the latest actor to join Denzel Washington, Chloe Moretz and Melissa Leo is David Meunier.
Meunier's film credits to date pretty much only add up to bit-parts in the likes of The Incredible Hulk and Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End. But he's a much more familiar face on television, with credits on Jericho, CSI, Castle, Bones, The Mentalist, Nikita, Revolution and, most prominently, Justified, where he has the recurring role of reprobate Johnny (cousin of Walton Goggins' Boyd Crowder).
Moving some distance from his current good-ol'-boy comfort zone, The Equalizer will see him playing a Russian pimp called Slavi. It's not too much of a stretch to infer he'll be the scumbag running Moretz's prostitute Teri, the catalyst for the plot in which Washington's Robert McCall finds himself on the wrong side of the Russian mob.
The Equalizer's screenplay is by Richard Wenk (The Mechanic, The Expendables 2), and shooting is set to start imminently in Boston, for a release date of April 11, 2014.