With Bad Boys: Ride Or Die galvanising the summer box office, bagging $100 million in its opening weekend and riding high at a cool $215 million current total cume, Sony Pictures are set to cash in on the success of star Will Smith's big-screen comeback with a buzzy new project. According to Deadline, the Oscar-winning King Richard actor is set to lead Sony's Resistor, a sci-fi thriller based on Daniel Suarez' bestselling novel Influx.
Plot details for the film — whose script was first written by Zak Olkewicz (Bullet Train), then redrafted most recently by Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle) — are under wraps at the mo. That being said, if Resistor follows Suarez' book, then we can expect Will Smith to play physicist Jon Grady, whose team discover a device that can reflect gravity. However, what should be a revolutionary, future-changing triumph soon turns into a nightmare for Jon when the Bureau of Technology Control — a shadowy organisation bent on suppressing the truth of technological progress — dump him into a high-tech prison filled with other rebel intellectuals. Together, Jon and co stand as humanity's last hope to be led out of its artificial dark age. Or, to put it more simply, Jon finds himself faced with a simple question Smith is all too familiar with: "Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"
Producers Escape Artists have been developing Resistor for some time now, and see the sci-fi flick as a perfect star vehicle for Smith, whose Hollywood icon status was secured by charismatic turns in genre fare like Independence Day and Men In Black. According to Deadline's reporting, Smith committed to Resistor shortly after reading the script and meeting with execs. And whilst no director is attached to helm the feature just yet, the idea of Suarez' cerebral source material being paired with a resurgent Smith returning to his sci-fi roots makes for a hell of a tantalising prospect. Here's hoping this one slaps! (Just, er, not in that way preferably...)