Denzel Washington is eyeing the lead role in “Inner City,” a legal drama written and to be directed by Dan Gilroy.
The project is being billed as a character study in the vein of Paul Newman’s 1982 classic “The Verdict,” and could land two-time Oscar winner Washington back in the awards race.
Washington will play a lawyer in an ambulance-chasing firm. When his boss falls ill, he steps in as the frontman, but manages to make a mess of things at every turn.
The movie takes place in Los Angeles, the familiar gritty setting of “Nightcrawler,” which was Gilroy’s directorial debut after three decades of screenwriting. That 2014 film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a troubled crime paparazzo (who also chased ambulances), grossed $32 million domestically on a $8.5 million budget.
Jennifer Fox is producing “Inner City.”
The script is hot off the presses and hasn’t been shopped to distributors yet. However, several major players, including Netflix, have been tracking the project.
Washington can next been seen in Antoine Fuqua’s remake of “The Magnificent Seven,” which will open this year’s Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 8. And he carries directing and acting duties for the big-screen adaptation of August Wilson’s “Fences,” opposite Viola Davis, which is generating Oscars buzz before its Christmas release.
Ramin Setoodeh © 2016 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC