MOVIE NEWS – Back in 2023, we learned that director Antoine Fuqua would be teaming up once again with Denzel Washington for a film about Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who took on Rome in the Second Punic War, which lasted from around 218 to 201 B.C. We’ve heard precious little about the project since then — we don’t even have a title — but World of Reel now reports that production on the Netflix movie is set to begin this June.

Hannibal famously crossed the Alps with a massive army — including war elephants — and brought war to the Roman Republic. It’s not hard to imagine how that could make for an extremely cinematic story, especially with an actor as skilled and charismatic as Washington in the lead role.

World of Reel also reports that the director of photography on the movie will be Robert Richardson, whose resume boasts a long list of Hollywood classics, including Platoon, Casino, the Kill Bill movies, and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Richardson won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography for his work on JFK, The Aviator, and Hugo. The writer is John Logan, who wrote Gladiator, The Aviator, Hugo, and Skyfall.

A lot of the top-level talent on this movie have worked together before. Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have joined forces many times, including on Training Day, which resulted in Washington winning one of his two Oscars. They also teamed up on the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven as well as the Equalizer trilogy. Meanwhile, Richardson worked with Fuqua on The Equalizer 3 as well as on the 2022 historical drama Emancipation. And John Logan wrote the script for Fuqua‘s upcoming Michael Jackson biopic Michael, which is due in theaters on April 24. Hopefully this familiarity will help these creatives slide into an easy rhythm and produce something fantastic.

Washington has taken on all kinds of roles over the course of his long career, including a few in the ancient world. He might be able to use his experience playing power broker Macrinus in Gladiator II, which is set just about a decade before the Second Punic War. Washington was the best thing about Gladiator II, so it’s exciting to think about him making another historical epic, this time with him at its center.

The fact that this is a Netflix original movie may be cause for some concern, since Netflix has a long history of keeping its movies largely out of theaters no matter how epic and cinematic they are, and this one sounds like it could be both of those things. Hopefully Netflix will be willing to release this one on the big screen — something it’s doing more of as time goes on.

There’s no release date for Washington’s Hannibal biopic as of yet, and no official title has been announced.

Source: MovieWeb