Denzel Washington is almost universally revered as one of our greatest actors. He has the Oscars to prove it. He won his first for Glory and his second for Training Day, which marked the start of what would be a fruitful working relationship with director Antoine Fuqua. Hell, there’s even a podcast called Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period.

Washington’s talent is undeniable, but his creative choices are much more questionable. He pulls out fine, leading-man performances, particularly in movies like Inside Man, American Gangster, and Flight. Yet throughout the last decade, he has squandered that enormous talent in a series of overwrought, underthought collaborations with Tony Scott, including Unstoppable, The Taking Of The Pelham 1 2 3, and Man On Fire. Washington has always had a weakness for generic genre fare—the bloodier, the better. So when it was announced that this titan of the silver screen would be starring in the Fuqua-directed feature film adaptation of The Equalizer, a half-forgotten show about an old British guy who kills a bunch of punks half his age, it wasn’t terribly surprising, even if it felt like a spectacular waste of his talent. 

Washington’s talent may have been squandered, but they were squandered lucratively. The Equalizer, part of the strange current mania for movies about tough old men who murder and/or beat up the young people of today (a genre led by the increasingly weary Liam Neeson), made almost $200 million worldwide. 

So now, Washington’s gifts are going to be squandered all over again with the news that there is an Equalizer sequel in the works, which will once again find the revered thespian killing a whole bunch of people younger than him, and, maybe, in a possible twist, people older than him as well. Maybe when he brutally takes down a drug ring operating out of an old folks’ home?

Chloe Moretz co-starred in the original film as the girl Washington protected from Russian mobsters. It is unknown whether she will return. Details are scarce, but it looks like a sequel to The Equalizer is indeed happening at Sony, with Washington picking up a fat old paycheck for a performance unlikely to win him that rare third Academy Award.