One hundred percent, I mean, many of the Sergio Leone movies were with Clint Eastwood, and that's what it is.

I'm a product of older filmmakers I guess, the past where you get to make movies and scenes are what they are. You know if you think about Scorsese back in the day when he was making Taxi Driver, or Coppola or Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, they're making films where you witness violence in a real way.

Well, we studied a lot of books and things like that. Denzel has a personal experience with it, not himself, that's his business-I won't get into that, but he knows a lot about it as well. So, we took some real life experiences that we both-I've been told that I have OCD.

There are many stories of people didn't set out to make a film that became a classic - the whole process was a disaster, everybody hated each other, the movie itself was a disaster, everybody thought the movie and the script was going to be a piece of crap. Look at Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. Nobody wanted to make Psycho; it was crap to them. The only person that wanted to make Psycho was Hitchcock. Now, it's considered a classic and a work of art.

I just think you can't shut your life off to just, you know, one thing. You gotta be open-minded. Explore things. Feed your artist.

So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.

I would be lying to you if I said I wouldn't love for it [Equalizer] to become a franchise, I would love for it to become a hit and all that great stuff. Who knows-you just make the best movie you can make, you know it's like, eat the whole thing, one piece at a time. And then, we'll see what happens, I would love for it to be.