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Antoine Fuqua (; born May 30, 1965) is an American film director known for his work in the action and thriller genres. He was originally known as a director of music videos, and made his film debut in 1998 with The Replacement Killers. His critical breakthrough was the 2001 crime thriller Training Day, winning the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Director.
His subsequent films include Tears of the Sun (2003), King Arthur (2004), Shooter (2007), Brooklyn's Finest (2009), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), Southpaw (2015), The Magnificent Seven (2016) and The Equalizer trilogy (2014–2023), earning with the first one the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture.
He also directed the critically acclaimed documentaries American Dream/American Knightmare (2018), (2019), and the 2022 Hulu documentary series Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers, for which he won the Sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Documentary Series.
Fuqua pays tribute to screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto, a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa's, saying his writing "affected a boy from Pittsburgh living in the ghetto."
Fuqua later said that his experience of violence shaped his adolescence, and played a role in his eventual choice of career.
From 1998 onwards, Fuqua began working primarily as a feature film director. In a tribute article for Time magazine, Fuqua expressed his early respect for Kurosawa as a filmmaker and how Kurosawa influenced his own perspective on filmmaking stating: "screen ... working with Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni, was so beautiful and poetic and powerful and heartbreaking. It was all about justice, it was all about sacrifice, and it made me want to be one of those guys".
His first feature films were the John Woo-produced action film The Replacement Killers (1998), starring Chow Yun Fat and the action comedy Bait (2000) starring Jamie Foxx. He then directed the crime thriller Training Day (2001), for which star Denzel Washington won an Academy Award for Best Actor. His next films were the action war drama Tears of the Sun (2003), the Arthurian legend film King Arthur (2004), the conspiracy action thriller Shooter (2007), the crime film Brooklyn's Finest (2009), and the action thrillers Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and The Equalizer (2014), the latter of which again pairs Fuqua with Denzel Washington. In 2011, he directed CIA procedural Fox pilot Exit Strategy starring Ethan Hawke. ]] He co-created the comic-book miniseries After Dark with Wesley Snipes, which was written by Peter Milligan and illustrated by Jeff Nentrup. He was slated to direct Tupac Shakur's official biopic Production On Tupac Film To Begin This Spring AllHipHop. but the project was postponed to allow Fuqua to direct rapper Eminem's second feature film, Southpaw (2015). Eminem later left Southpaw to focus on his music, and was replaced with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Fuqua's 2016 film, The Magnificent Seven, was a remake of the classic 1960 Western of the same name which itself was an American remake of Kurosawa's 1954 film, Seven Samurai. Denzel Washington plays the lead role of Sam Chisolm.
In early 2018, Fuqua worked as one of the executive producers on the Fox medical drama series The Resident. In the summer of 2018, his thriller sequel The Equalizer 2 (2018) was released with Denzel Washington returning in the main role. In June 2021, Fuqua's sci-fi film Infinite, starring Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor was released.
In 2021, Fuqua and actor Will Smith announced that their upcoming film, Emancipation, would not be filmed in Georgia because of the recent passage of Georgia's new voting law. Smith and Fuqua released a joint statement: "We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access".
On December 3, 2021, he signed a first look deal with Netflix and renamed his production company from Fuqua Films to Hill District Media. He later signed an overall television deal with Paramount Television Studios and MTV Entertainment Studios.
In January 2023, Fuqua announced his next film project would be Michael, a biographical film about Michael Jackson, starring Jackson's nephew Jaafar Jackson and being produced by Graham King.
When asked by the BBC in September 2014 whether he believes in God, Fuqua said: "Absolutely."
| 1998 | The Replacement Killers | ||
| 2000 | Bait | ||
| 2001 | Training Day | ||
| 2003 | Tears of the Sun | ||
| 2004 | King Arthur | ||
| 2007 | Shooter | ||
| 2009 | Brooklyn's Finest | ||
| 2013 | Olympus Has Fallen | ||
| 2014 | The Equalizer | ||
| 2015 | Southpaw | ||
| 2016 | The Magnificent Seven | ||
| 2018 | The Equalizer 2 | ||
| 2021 | Infinite | ||
| The Guilty | |||
| 2022 | Bullet Train | ||
| Emancipation | |||
| 2023 | The Equalizer 3 | ||
| 2024 | Rob Peace | ||
| 2025 | Michael |
| 2004 | Lightning in a Bottle | |||
| 2005 | Bastards of the Party | |||
| 2016 | Forever Brothers: The '71 Pittsburgh Pirates Story | TV movie | ||
| 2018 | American Dream/American Knightmare | |||
| 2019 | ||||
| 2021 | The Day Sports Stood Still |
| 2016–2017 | Ice | Episode "Hyenas" | ||
| 2022 | The Terminal List | Episode "The Engram" | ||
| Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers | 10 episodes | |||
Executive producer only
| 1990 | "I Like the Girls" | Mr. Lee | |
| 1992 | "Love's Taken Over" | Chanté Moore | |
| "It's Alright" | |||
| "All I See" | Christopher Williams | ||
| "Saving Forever for You" | Shanice | ||
| 1993 | "Another Sad Love Song" (Black and White Version, International Version) | Toni Braxton | |
| "The Morning After" | Maze featuring Frankie Beverly | ||
| "Nobody Does It Betta" | Mint Condition | ||
| 1994 | "Ain't Nobody" | Jaki Graham | |
| "Somewhere" | Shanice | ||
| "I'm in the Mood" | CeCe Peniston | ||
| "Deep Down" | Ladae | ||
| "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" | Prince | ||
| "Sending My Love" | Zhané | ||
| "United Front" | Arrested Development | ||
| 1995 | "For Your Love" | Stevie Wonder | |
| "Freedom" | Various Artists | ||
| "Gangsta's Paradise" | Coolio | ||
| 1996 | "Someday" | All-4-One | |
| 1998 | "Bedtime (Version 2)" | Usher Raymond | |
| 1999 | "Blue Angels" | Pras | |
| 2007 | "Citizen/Soldier" | 3 Doors Down | |
| 2011 | "Mirror" | Lil Wayne | |
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