A prequel to Denzel Washington’s Training Day is reportedly in the works at Warner Bros.
As reported by Collider, Training Day is getting yet another look from Warner Bros., this time in prequel form. Nick Yarborough (who penned the Black List script A Letter from Rosemary Kennedy) has been tapped to write, with no director yet attached. The story reportedly follows Alonzo Harris ten years before the events of the original movie, at a time when Los Angeles was on-edge in the wake of the infamous Rodney King beating.
There is certainly plenty of room to explore Alonzo’s story in a prequel, but the challenge will come from trying to replace Washington in the role. Training Day came out 18 years ago and Washington was 46 at the time. Theoretically, his character in the prequel would need to be about 36 or 37 years old. Even with the digital de-aging technology, we have today it seems like making Washington nearly 30 years younger is probably out of the question.
Collider notes that Washington’s son, actor John David Washington, would be a likely candidate if the film moves forward. The studio hasn’t reached out to the younger Washington and he is currently not attached to the project in any way, but he is the right age for the role and has a voice nearly identical to his father’s. The method of casting a legend’s son to portray him has certainly worked in the past, as O’shea Jackson Jr. played his father, Ice Cube, in Straight Outta Compton.
Released in 2001, the original movie starred Ethan Hawke as Jake Hoyt, an officer in line for a potential job in the LAPD narcotics division who is taken on an evaluation by Washington’s Alonzo Harris. Jake quickly learns that Harris is a corrupt cop with a whole lot of demons in his closet, as his day becomes increasingly wild and dangerous.
At this point, the Training Day prequel is simply a script commission from Warner Bros. No filmmakers are involved and no plans for production have been made. It will all come down to how the studios likes Yarborough’s script.
