If you need a solid pair of hands to deliver a genre film with a decent-sized budget that isn’t going to set the critical world alight but can largely be relied on to do a solid turn at the box office, then Antoine Fuqua is one of the industry’s most qualified candidates.
The filmmaker has never been one to pigeonhole himself, and as a result his eclectic filmography includes such disparate titles as crime thriller Training Day, historical epic King Arthur, Gerard Butler actioner Olympus Has Fallen, Denzel Washington’s Equalizer duology, boxing drama Southpaw, The Magnificent Seven remake, Mark Wahlberg’s wretched sci-fi Infinite and recent streaming smash hit The Guilty.
Having helmed Paramount’s Infinite and Netflix’s The Guilty before moving on to Apple’s Emancipation with Will Smith, Fuqua is already carving out a reputation for working in the on-demand sphere. As per Deadline, that’s set to continue for a while longer now that he’s signed a first-look development deal with the world’s most popular platform.
The partnership will largely focus on feature films and documentaries, and it could be a smart move for Fuqua given that The Guilty scored the best reviews he’s experienced in a long time, on top of drawing in some impressive viewership figures on Netflix.
