EXCLUSIVE: With Sony Pictures‘ Bad Boys: Ride or Die passing the $100 million domestic box office mark this past weekend, the studio and Will Smith are already looking to the future as he is attached to star in Sony’s Resistor.
Based on the book Influx by bestselling author Daniel Suarez, the first draft of the script was written by Zak Olkewicz, with Eric Warren Singer penning the latest draft. The pic will be produced Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch and Tony Shaw of Escape Artists, which has been developing the project for some time with along with Smith and Jon Mone through Westbrook, with Heather Washington exec producing. Dave Wilson is also producing.
While plot details are under wraps, the 2014 novel is a sci-fi thriller that follows physicist Jon Grady and his team who have discovered a device that can reflect gravity — a triumph that will revolutionize the field of physics and change the future. But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab is locked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control.
The bureau’s mission: suppress the truth of sudden technological progress and prevent the social upheaval it would trigger. Because the future is already here, and its rewards are only for a select few. When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he’s thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison housing other doomed rebel intellects. Now, as the only hope to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age, Grady and his fellow prisoners must try to expose the secrets of an unimaginable enemy — one that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making.
Escape Artists has been developing the project for some time but after getting a script from Singer last month that excited execs, the studio and producers saw this as a perfect star vehicle for Smith. The studio wanted to move fast to stay in business with the star given how well the tracking was looking for opening weekend of Bad Boys: Ride or Die.
Once Smith had read the script and met with execs about the project a commitment was made, not too long after Bad Boys: Ride or Die would rejuvenate summer box office with his $100 million plus global opening. While this marks the first project Smith has signed onto since then, sources stress it most likely will not be his next; no director is currently attached, though those meetings are expected to ramp up in the coming weeks.
Smith has a long-standing relationship with both Sony and Todd Black that includes Seven Pounds, The Pursuit of Happyness and most recently the Civil War thriller Emancipation. Bad Boys is now a billion-dollar franchise, with Ride or Die earning $113 million domestically and $215.5 million globally in its first 10 days of release.
Smith is repped by CAA and Overbrook Entertainment.
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