Although September is not a big money-making month for movie releases, The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Marton Csokas, still managed to bring in the big bucks in its debut weekend at $35 million.
Denzel Washington, who turns 60 this year, remains one of Hollywood's most bankable actors, playing McCall in The Equalizer, a retired special ops member who tries to lead a quiet, normal life, but anonymously still uses his skills once in a while to do good deeds for those around him and deliver quick justice, his way, to those who do them wrong.
The lead character in he movie happens to seek revenge for a young girl (Moretz), who was actually being abused by members of the Russian mob. When he takes out the gang that was exploiting her, he becomes a target of the mob top boss (Csokas), who wants to take him down.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Equalizer is based on a 1980's TV series which ran for four seasons. Fuqua also directed Training Day with Washington in the starring role, who won an Academy Award for his work on the film.
With such a successful weekend run, TheEqualizer already beat out Liam Neeson's A Walk Among the Tombstones which made $20.9 million in its run so far.
The R-rated action-heavy movie was targeting an adult male audience. The move to have the film play in IMAX theatres and big-screen cinemas, which are favored by males, was a calculated one to make it much more appealing as a weekend movie escape in the lull between the end of the summer blockbuster season and the start of a new school year.
Although it was marketed for a male audience, reportedly, theatre-goers who saw the movie over the weekend were more evenly distributed among the genders with men making up 58 percent of the crowd and women making up 42 percent of the audience.
The Equalizer was the fourth highest September earner ever in box office history. It is also the third biggest US opener in Washington's career.
"He's one of the few actors on the planet that really appeals to everyone," said Rory Bruer, Sony's president of worldwide distribution,
Bruer also commened that a sequel for The Equalizer is definitely in the studio's radar. They saw the potential in the film to be a successful franchise to build upon very early on when the story and script were being developed.
