Will Smith has been cast in the leading role of an action crime film titled Sugar Bandits, a movie based off the 2010 book Devils in Exile from author Chuck Hogan. The Oscar-winning actor, 55, will portray an Iraq War veteran named Neal Maven, who forms an alliance with other military veterans aimed at the Boston drug trade, Variety reported on Wednesday.
The script was written by Hogan, who has past penned works including the 2016 movie 13 Hours and 2010’s The Town, as well as the 2014 TV show The Strain, which he co-wrote with Guillermo del Toro.
The motion picture will be shopped at the European Film Market – which commences Thursday – by the companies CAA Media Finance and AGC International, which are handling international distribution, the outlet reported.
The role in the film marks the first high-profile project for Smith since his 2022 collaboration with Antoine Fuqua, Emancipation, which debuted to pedestrian results in the wake of Smith’s Academy Awards slap of Chris Rock earlier that year.
The King Richard star is also linked to projects including a fourth film in the Bad Boys franchise; and a role opposite Michael B. Jordan in the I Am Legend sequel, according to the outlet.
The project has been more than a decade in the works, as a film adaptation of the book was initially pursued by Universal in 2013 with Joe Carnahan directing at the time, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The current incarnation of the motion picture does not have a director attached to it, the outlet reported. Smith is nearly two years removed from his infamous incident at the 2022 Oscars, in which he slapped comedian Chris Rock after he made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
The joke was about her shaved head, saying, ‘Jada, I love you, G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it!’ in a reference to the 1997 movie which featured Demi Moore with a shaved head. (Pinkett Smith has diagnosed with alopecia, which causes hair loss.) Smith then walked onstage and smacked Rock, then returned to his seat and shouted at him twice, ‘Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!’ to a stunned audience.
Later in the evening – in his acceptance speech after winning the Best Actor Oscar for his role as tennis patriarch Richard Williams in King Richard – Smith apologized to the Academy and other nominees, but made no reference to Rock.
Smith subsequently apologized on multiple occasions over the incident, and resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ahead of being issued a 10-year ban from the Oscars.