I was wondering when Miles Caton would book his post-“Sinners” role. Well, here it is. Per Deadline, the 21-year-old actor has joined Denzel Washington and Teyonah Parris in Christopher McQuarrie's “Compassionate Release” for Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists.
The plot has Washington playing a former police detective serving a life sentence who gets a terminal brain cancer diagnosis. He's granted compassionate release with six months to live and heads home to the estranged daughter (Parris) he walked away from, and to a grandson he never knew he had. That grandson is Caton. Denzel just wants to make amends and bury his past. Naturally, his past might be filled with violence.
Look, that's a familiar logline. This one could go either way. The dying ex-cop with one last shot at redemption is something we've seen before. The pull here is Denzel, and McQuarrie, stepping away from Tom Cruise, for something smaller and character-driven is intriguing.
Yep, this is McQuarrie's first directing job outside the Tom Cruise partnership since "The Way of the Gun," released more than 25 years ago. His last non-‘Mission: Impossible’ movie was “Jack Reacher” in 2012. He broke out winning an Oscar for “The Usual Suspects’ screenplay.
Scott Barkan and Gregg Zehentner wrote the script. It opens in theaters on October 1, 2027, which smells like Amazon/MGM potentially thinking awards season — though I have my doubts.
As for Caton, in “Sinners” he played Sammie, the young blues guitarist and cousin to Michael B. Jordan's twins. He won Best Young Actor/Actress at the Critics Choice Awards and picked up more than 30 nominations, including the BAFTA Rising Star and an Actor Awards nod for supporting actor.
Caton is actually the son of gospel singer Timiney Figueroa, and started out singing backup for H.E.R. Playing Denzel's grandson in a McQuarrie film is a promising followup to “Sinners.” Sharing scenes with Washington is a masterclass, he’ll learn a ton about the craft. I'm curious to see what he does with it.
Hours after being shown the door at DC Studios, James Gunn has posted his farewell on Instagram. The gist? He never really liked the job anyway.