One of the most intriguing new projects we’ve learned about recently is a teamup of Denzel Washington and director Christopher McQuarrie on a crime film for Amazon MGM. Thanks to Production Weekly, we now know that fillm is titled Compassionate Release, and it will be shot by DP Eigil Bryld starting next month.
The film has a script by will have a script by Scott Barkan and Gregg Zehentner. Washington will star as a former police detective serving a life sentence, until he’s granted compassionate release following a terminal brain cancer diagnosis. With only six months to live, he returns home with the hopes of reconnecting with his estranged daughter and the grandson he never knew, but finds that his criminal past won’t be left behind.
McQuarrie’s partnership with Tom Cruise began with Valkyrie in 2008. Every movie he’s directed since has been alongside Cruise, including four Mission: Impossible sequels. He hasn’t directed a non-Mission: Impossible movie since 2012’s Jack Reacher, which also starred Cruise. But that creative partnership seems to be at an end, as McQuarrie has not only Compassionate Release, but a King Conan movie in the works.
Bryld is a different type of cinematographer than McQuarrie has worked with recently. He specializes in smaller movies, having directed The Holdovers, In Bruges, Ocean’s 8, The Report, and No Hard Feelings just to name a few.
Compassionate Release opens on October 1st 2027.
