(UTV | COLOMBO) – Multiple Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (“Ms Marvel,” “Saving Face,” “A Girl in the River”) is set to make her narrative feature directorial debut on “Brilliance” at Paramount Pictures.
The film has been a passion project for Will Smith and Akiva Goldsman, with the hope remaining that Smith will star – though he hasn’t committed as yet. Goldsman wrote the script.
Based on Marcus Sakey’s bestselling novel trilogy, the story is set in a future where ‘brilliants’, the rare 1% born gifted with superior mental abilities starting from 1980, are carefully tracked by the government.
A federal agent (Smith) is tasked with using his own gift – the ability to read body language so well that he can predict people’s moves – to infiltrate a radical group and hunt down another ‘brilliant’ who could plunge the entire country into a devastating civil war.
Smith, Goldsman, Jon Mone, Ryan Shimazaki, Greg Lessans, Shane Salerno and James Lassiter are producing. Smith, who hasn’t made a film since the Oscar slap incident earlier this year, still has Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation” to be released with indications being Apple will open that film in early December.