Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists have greenlit an untitled thriller with Denzel Washington starring and Christopher McQuarrie directing. The project carries the working title The Frame, according to Deadline, with filming scheduled to begin in November in New Jersey and a theatrical release set for October 1, 2027.
The script is by Scott Barkan and Gregg Zehentner, whose credits include Into the Dark and Edge of Fear. The film follows a former police detective serving a life sentence who is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Granted compassionate release, he returns to an estranged daughter and a grandson he never knew. The logline, per TheWrap, closes on a warning: "But his dark past has not forgotten him."
The project is produced by McQuarrie and Heather McQuarrie, alongside Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt for United Artists, Katia Washington, Tommy Harper, and Joseph Restaino of Hungry Bull Productions. Casting for the role of Washington's daughter has not yet been announced.
The collaboration marks the first pairing of Washington and McQuarrie. McQuarrie received an Academy Award for writing The Usual Suspects in 1995 and has spent the past decade as the driving creative force behind the Mission: Impossible franchise. Washington, a two-time Academy Award winner, recently starred in Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest and returned to the stage in Othello opposite Jake Gyllenhaal. He also remains attached to Netflix's The Take alongside Robert Pattinson and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
A terminally ill ex-cop with a hidden past and a filmmaker who builds stories around the weight of incomplete choices. October 2027.