Denzel Washington guns down top spot at the box office yet again, and he would have broken a record if it wasn’t for that meddling MCU

There are few stars of the modern era that can boast a box office track record quite like Denzel Washington, and he’s at it again after The Equalizer 3 marked his eighth movie in the last two decades to debut at number one.

That’s even more impressive when you consider the adventures of Robert McCall marks the one and only multi-film series the two-time Academy Award winner has ever lent his name to, so it’s not as if he’s doing what the majority of his A-list contemporaries do and riding the coattails of several successful franchises to rack up a string of box office sensations.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then The Equalizer 3 would have set a brand new record after it scored the second highest-grossing Labor Day debut of all-time behind only Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, thanks to an estimated four-day haul of $42 million, another impressive feat considering it’s an R-rated title being released during a time when even the biggest brands in the business are experiencing severe theatrical misfortune.

The downside is that it’ll more than likely be the last time we see Denzel headlining this particular IP, and at 68 years old the clock might just be starting to wind down on his days of running and gunning. You’d imagine he doesn’t want to end up like Liam Neeson and keep returning to the same well over and over and over again, to vastly diminished returns.