HERE’S A CASTING story that could end up being almost as good as the film it’s about. It has to do with a movie called The Antwone Fisher Story, which Denzel Washington is due to direct at Fox, where it will mark his first stint behind the camera.

The real Antwone Fisher was a security guard at the Sony studios in Hollywood who got chatting one day to producer Todd Black (most recent credit: A Knight’s Tale). Fisher told Black about his abusive childhood, which he had written up into a memoir called Finding Fish. Black was so impressed with what he read that he got Fisher to convert the memoir into a screenplay.

Fisher did so, the results were every bit as impressive as Black had expected, and a whole range of A-list stars, including Cuba Gooding Jr and Will Smith, started showing interest. Then another fairytale began.

One day, Fisher was in the gift shop on the Sony lot and started talking to one of the sales assistants, Derek Luke. Turns out Luke, who hails from the projects of New Jersey, had relocated to Pasadena, wanted to become an actor, and was working an early shift so he could get to all the necessary auditions. More to the point, it turns out his background was very similar to Fisher’s.

Beginning to see where this is heading? Well, that’s exactly where it ended up: Luke went on so much to Fisher about wanting to read the screenplay that the writer finally showed it to him. And the gift-shop assistant was so impressive in that particular audition that he got the role, ending what was shaping up into a nationwide search. The Antwone Fisher Story, meanwhile, is currently in production at Sony.