Sony Pictures is staying in the Will Smith business. Bad Boys: Ride or Die markeda theatrical comeback for the Men in Black and Suicide Squad star — the $218 million-grossing fourth installment in the Sony franchise was Smith’s first theatrical release since his Oscar-winning role in 2021’s King Richard — and now the studio is developing the sci-fi movie Resistor as a star vehicle for Smith.
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According to Deadline, which first reported the news, Smith will produce via his Westbrook Inc. with Jon Mone (Emancipation). Todd Black, who produced Smith’s Seven Pounds and The Pursuit of Happyness, is producing with Jason Blumenthal (The Equalizer 3), Steve Tisch (Servant), and Tony Shaw for Escape Artists.
The sci-fi thriller is based on New York Times bestselling author Daniel Saurez’s 2015 novel Influx, with Smith playing a role that has been described as “the Tom Clancy of cyber security.” Per the book’s official synopsis: “Physicist Jon Grady and his team have discovered a device thatcan reflect gravity—a triumph that will revolutionize the field ofphysics and change the future. But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab islocked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of TechnologyControl.
The bureau’s mission: suppress the truth of suddentechnological progress and prevent the social upheaval it would trigger.Because the future is already here. And it’s rewards are only for aselect few. When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he’s thrown intoa 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 anunimaginable enemy—one that wields a technological advantage half acentury in the making.”
Zak Olkewicz, who wrote Sony’s Bullet Train, penned the script’s first draft; Top Gun: Maverick scribe Eric Singer submitted the latest draft, according to Deadline. The outlet notes that Resistor is the first project Smith signed onto since Bad Boys 4‘s $100 million-plus opening, but is not expected to be his next movie as no director is attached (Smith has I Am Legend 2 in the works with Michael B. Jordan at Warner Bros.).
Besides the now billion-grossing Bad Boys franchise, Sony’s Columbia Pictures released Smith’s blockbuster Men in Black trilogy, his 2005 romcom Hitch, his 2008 superhero comedy Hancock, and the 2013 sci-fi movie After Earth. The studio also released the 2001 biographical drama Ali, which earned Smith his first Oscar nomination, and 2007’s The Pursuit of Happyness, for which the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star received his second Oscar nom for Best Actor.
