EXCLUSIVE: 4-time Emmy Award and two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy will make her narrative function directorial debut on Brilliance, the Paramount Photos adaptation of the Marcus Sakey novel. Pic has been a ardour challenge for Will Smith and Akiva Goldsman who did I, Robotic, I Am Legend and Hancock collectively. The hope stays that the movie is a star automobile for Smith although sources stated he hasn’t dedicated to star. Goldsman wrote the script.
Obaid-Chinoy is finest recognized for guiding her Oscar-winning documentary shorts Saving Face and A Woman within the River, The Value of Forgiveness and most not too long ago Ms Marvel. Smith is producing by way of his firm Westbrook Studios with Jon Mone and Ryan Shimazaki. Akiva Goldsman and Greg Lessans are producing by way of Weed Street Photos, together with Shane Salerno by way of The Story Manufacturing unit, and James Lassiter. The writer is co-producer.
The premise: If 1% of the world’s kids had been born with highly effective presents, how would society adapt to them? The Brilliance novel trilogy is ready in a future the place non-neurotypical individuals — demonized by society as “twists” or “abnorms” — are threatening the established order of the “regular” inhabitants with their distinctive presents. They’re formally labeled as “Brilliants” and are fastidiously tracked by the federal government. The plan is for Smith to play the e-book sequence hero Nick Cooper, a federal agent who works for the Division of Evaluation and Response. His job is to trace down and terminate prison abnorms who use their presents for sick. The agent is himself an abnorm, with a present for predictive evaluation that enables him to see what’s going to occur earlier than it occurs and react preemptively. He’s additionally the daddy of a Good daughter.
As he infiltrates a radical group of Brilliants who plan to incite a civil struggle, he makes use of his personal presents towards his Good enemies, like an murderer who perceives time sooner than his opponents. When Cooper is ordered to search out John Smith — the nation’s most elusive and most harmful abnorm — all the pieces Cooper believes in will likely be referred to as into query. As one of many abnorms he’s searching tells him, “You may’t cease the longer term. All you are able to do is decide a facet.”
Sakey has since revealed the sequel novels A Higher World and Written in Hearth, and the Amazon-published e-book sequence has bought practically 2 million.
Smith hasn’t made a movie because the notorious Oscar slap incident earlier this yr that occurred earlier than he gained the Greatest Actor prize and was subsequently banned by the Academy for a decade. He subsequent stars in Emancipation, enjoying a hunted runaway enslaved man who struggles to freedom within the harmful swamps of Louisiana within the Antoine Fuqua-directed fact-based thriller. Whereas the press is already scrutinizing what Apple will do with the movie and whether or not Smith’s controversy will hobble what might need been a prohibitive Oscar favourite, sources stated Apple will launch the movie in early December. As for Smith, actual film stars are uncommon. Whereas their fortunes can ebb and move, the highest ones have a manner of coming again. This facet of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, none has been extra profitable over the previous 20 years on a worldwide scale than Smith.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is repped by CAA and Fox Rothschild.
