(Variety) Paramount, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films have set Ang Lee’s science-fiction actioner “Gemini Man,” starring Will Smith, for an awards-season release date of Oct. 4, 2019.
Skydance came on to the project, which has been in development for two decades, last year. Jerry Bruckheimer, Skydance chief David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger are producing. Don Murphy and Chad Oman are executive producing.
Lee became attached to the project in April. His most recent film was “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” for which he used an unprecedented shooting and projection frame rate of 120 frames per second — five times faster than the normal rate of 24 frames per second. He won Academy Awards for directing “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life of Pi,” and was nominated for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
Smith will next be seen starring opposite Joel Edgerton in the futuristic police thriller “Bright,” set for a December release by Netflix.
In 2009, the late Curtis Hanson had been attached to direct “Gemini Man” from a script by David Benioff, about an aging NSA agent who’s targeted for death when he tries to retire. He then discovers his assassin is a younger cloned version of himself.
“Gemini Man” was first set up at Disney in 1997 as a pitch by Darren Lemke, with Murphy producing and Tony Scott directing.
The film is the first title to be dated for October of 2019.
Source: Variety by Dave McNary