Will Smith looking to have Ed Zwick to direct American CanPosted by Wilson Morales
April 19, 2013
Source: Mike Fleming – Deadline
After signing to do the Warner Bros grifter pic Focus, Deadline is being told that Will Smith, Sony Pictures and his Overbrook Entertainment partner James Lassiter and Jada Pinkett Smith have revived American Can, and are now looking to Ed Zwick to direct Smith in a reluctant hero role that seems like a tailor-fit. He will play John Keller, a real guy who returned from Gulf War service looking for a new challenge, and found one after Hurricane Katrina devastated his home city of New Orleans. He found a boat and was moving to safety when he saw a blind elderly woman, stranded and calling for her son. Knowing she would certainly die if he passed by, Keller brought her back to safety in the American Can building. Shortly after, he found many more stranded seniors, and brought each of them back, around 244 in total, to American Can, a building that at least was dry. It was tricky business, but using his resourcefulness and his military training to get food drops to feed his new friends, he kept them alive and eventually found enough boats to lead them all to safety. The script was written by Adetoro Makinde and John Lee Hancock. Hancock originally intended to direct it, but the project languished while Smith did other things and Hancock went off to direct Saving Mr. Banks at Disney with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson, poised to follow that with The Highwaymen, with Liam Neeson and Woody Harrelson being courted to play the Texas Rangers who hunted down Bonnie & Clyde.
Deadline has heard that Smith will likely do this film after Focus, in which he’ll play a veteran con man who mentors a young female newcomer to the grifter game for directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. This is the project that Ben Affleck was going to star in, before dropping out to focus on the adaptation of the Dennie Lehane novel Live By Night, which Affleck will direct.
There has also been talk that Smith is once again eyeing The Accountant, another project he’d previously circled, back when it was at Warner Bros and Mel Gibson was going to direct him. Deadline heard that this project was coming around again at Media Rights Capital with Sony, but PR for MRC denied it yesterday. Now, they are saying they only denied the Will Smith part of it, but since they saw a story this morning about MRC’s involvement on their sister publication Variety (without any substantive cast details), they are going to remember now and in the future that their sources are more believable than PR people, and just put it out there. Deadline believes that Smith is once again eyeing this thriller about a government accountant who doubles as an assassin. Gibson is no longer involved. Bill Dubuque wrote the script.
MIB3 grossed $624 million worldwide, and he next stars in with son Jaden in the M. Night Shyamalan-directed After Earth. He throws a lot of effort into Overbrook producing projects like Karate Kid and the upcoming Annie.
Smith and Zwick are repped by CAA.
