Although the new version of The Magnificent Seven was feeling more like an Equalizer reunion, with Antoine Fuqua directing, Denzel Washington starring and one of the film’s co-stars, Haley Bennett, aboard, we now have a Training Day trifecta instead. Ethan Hawke has signed on to share the screen with his old sparring partner Washington.
Chris Pratt is also set for the film, which will once more see a small town – in this case built around a gold mine –threatened by a ruthless baron and his gang of thugs. When they kill several people in their attempt to take the place over, a young widow (Bennett) hires a bounty hunter (Washington) to dispatch the bad guys, supplying him with the necessary funds to hire six gunmen to help him in his mission. Which is where Pratt and others come into play.
John Lee Hancock and True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto are among those who have contributed to the screenplay, adapted from the classic Seven Samurai, which became the first crack at a Magnificent Seven in 1960.
Hawke, who scored an Oscar nomination for his work on Boyhood, was last on our screens in time-travel thriller Predestination. He’ll follow that up with drone drama Good Kill, Shakespeare adaptation Cymbeline (AKA Anarchy), Regression and In A Valley Of Violence.