Filming The Equalizer 3 Came With A Lot Of Vomiting
When Denzel Washington returns to "The Equalizer" franchise this week, his Robert McCall will once again be spilling plenty of bad guys' blood — this time all over scenic Southern Italy. The red-band trailer for "The Equalizer 3" features plenty of the franchise's signature skull-knocking action, including a quick look at a scene that features McCall quite literally jamming a gun in some dude's eye. Apparently, though, fake blood wasn't the only thing being spilled during the making of the movie. According to director Antoine Fuqua, there was also a whole lot of puking.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Fuqua revealed the film's crew had trouble with one particularly arduous set: a church on the Amalfi Coast with a lengthy staircase. A quick shot in the film's trailer seems to show the interior of an old church, which appears to have a stone, spiral-like staircase. "The church is 700 steps up," Fuqua explained, and apparently the initial plan for hauling equipment all that way didn't pan out. "When I got there, I said, 'So, how are we going to get this equipment up the steps?' 'Oh, we use donkeys.'"
While perhaps unorthodox, cameras and equipment carried on the backs of donkeys would certainly be easier on crew members than them hauling it up a few dozen flights of stairs every day. Yet that didn't happen. "I didn't see one donkey in Italy the whole time I was there. There wasn't a donkey in sight!" Fuqua told EW. Instead, he said he saw "my crew, with cigarettes dangling out of their mouths carrying equipment up these steps." Needless to say, "There was a lot of puking going on."
A steep church climb made crew members lose their lunch
It's clear that a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into finishing off "The Equalizer" franchise with a bang, but vomit is a bit excessive. Still, if you've ever toured an old, tall European monument, you'll know exactly how unforgiving the climb can be — even without heavy cameras in tow. According to The Guardian, the "scenic thousand-year-old church sitting atop a hill" ends up integral — either physically or metaphorically — to the film's climax, so hopefully the gnarly and gut-churning daily treks were worth it. The new film's Italian backdrop is a majorly ambitious upgrade from the first two entries in the series, which were mostly filmed in Boston.
"The Equalizer 3" (read /Film's review here) will likely mark the end of Robert McCall's story, as Fuqua told EW he and Washington discussed the latest movie as if "this would be it." So could McCall die in "The Equalizer 3"? If he did, it would be for a noble cause, as the latest movie follows him returning from retirement to protect Italian locals in his new home from vicious Mafia men. If McCall goes out in a blaze of glory (perhaps making the ultimate sacrifice in an austere old church?), it could mark the end of a successful and surprisingly long-running trilogy.
You can catch the (probable) end of "The Equalizer" story in theaters now.