Will Smith Considering Starring Role in ‘Brilliance’

According to a report at The Wrap (and confirmed by Deadline), Will Smith is considering a starring role in Brilliance, a Legendary Pictures adaptation of Marcus Sakey’s novel Brilliance, just released recently last year and published by Thomas and Mercer, a subsidiary of Amazon. Brilliance is the first of an intended three-book series, the second book release planned for later this year. Sakey’s novel takes place in a fantasy world where one percent of the children are born as savants (also known as “Brilliants” hence the title) with special powers. The story is focused on a federal agent (potentially Smith), a Brilliant who is recruited to hunt down a terrorist, another Brilliant who wants to start a civil war.

Brilliance has a similar premise to the X-Men series, as it focuses on a series of gifted individuals as a minority of society at large; however, unlike X-Men, which follows the X-Men team in a world where mutant individuals are not appreciated, Brilliance takes place in a fundamentally different fantasy world where it is Brilliants are accepted, even revered.  In addition, Brilliance  is a mystery thriller as opposed to the more action heavy and, well, superhero fare of the X-Men films.

The script for Brilliance is penned by David Koepp, who has written many popular action movies like Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, and Sam Raimi’s 2002 iteration of Spider-Man. Julius Onah, the up and coming director behind the 2012 drama The Girl Is in Trouble, will be directing, with Legendary Pictures producing and Universal distributing as part of its distribution deal with Legendary. Joe Roth (Snow White and The Huntsman), Thomas Tull (The Dark Knight), and Jon Jashini (The Hangover) will produce while Palak Patel (also from Snow White and The Huntsman), Alex Hedlund (Subbing 4 Julia) and Eric McLeod (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) will executive produce.

Smith’s next movie will be Warner Brother’s heist movie Focus co-starring with Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street), coming out in 2015.