It's getting tough to keep track of the projects that Antoine Fuqua has in development. Over the last year or so his name has come up connected to Prisoners,** Escobar**, Southpaw, The Tomb, Storming Las Vegas, Afterburn, a Chinese historical epic and a biopic of Tupac Shakur. None of them have come to fruition as his follow-up to Brooklyn's Finest though, and Fuqua is now attached to Hunter Killer, which is ready to go at Relativity, but in need of a director sharp-ish since Philip Noyce dropped out.
The film has been developing for some time - it was originally earmarked for Taken's Pierre Morel before the post-Salt Noyce came aboard - so all concerned must be celebrating that it's finally moving forward.
The same can't quite be said for the book it's based on, which remains unpublished (it's currently scheduled to be released by Signet in July 2012), despite having been optioned by Relativity more than two years ago. We're told, however, that it revolves around an American submarine captain and a group of Navy SEALs on a mission to rescue the Russian president, who's been kidnapped by a rogue general. Ramius! Or maybe not.
The book is by Don Keith and George Wallace (a real-life retired submariner; not the comedian) and the screenplay is by John Kolvenbach, Arme Schmidt, and Jamie Moss, who wrote Street Kings. There's no cast yet, but we'd expect things to get moving quickly, since the film already has a release-date of December 2012, and a projected start-date this winter.
And while **Tupac **is on the back-burner for the time being, Fuqua is still putting together a documentary on Death Row Records' Suge Knight, for the Showtime network.