Denzel Washington holing up at ‘Safe House’

Los Angeles: Denzel Washington is in negotiations to star in the spy thriller ‘Safe House,’ which Universal snapped up during a heated bidding war in February. Washington would play the lead role of a dangerous prisoner being escorted through menacing territory by a young CIA agent. Daniel Espinosa (‘Snabba Cash’) is directing from a script by David Guggenheim.

The storyline follows the only surviving agent of an attack on a CIA safe house as he tries to get a lethal prisoner to a second safe house before being taken out by violent forces that want them both dead. The project would put Washington on familiar action ground, if on the bad-guy side of the dynamic that won him an Oscar for ‘Training Day’ in 2001. Washington won a Tony last month for August Wilson`s ‘Fences.’ The play`s limited 13-week run ends this month, so the actor had been looking for his next film project. ‘Unstoppable,’ which Washington filmed for director Tony Scott, is already in the can for a November release via Fox. The only other major project on the actor`s horizon is an adaptation of Robert Ludlum`s ‘Matarese Circle,’ in which he would star with Tom Cruise for director David Cronenberg. But that project is frozen in the financial troubles of MGM. Bureau Report