The hot package du jour: Bright, an action spec package for
a script that David Ayer will direct, with Will Smith and Joel Edgerton
attached to star. I’m told the script was written by Max Landis, and it falls
into the director’s wheelhouse, with a major twist. It’s a contemporary cop
thriller, but with fantastical elements.
The bidding is just warming up. It’s
not simply a spec sale; whoever buys it is going to make it and so it will be a
big sale. Eric Newman and Bryan Unkeless are producing with Landis.
This puts Smith and Ayer back together after they wrapped
Suicide Squad for Warner Bros and DC. Warner Bros releases Suicide Squad August
5. Smith is shooting the David Frankel-directed Collateral Beauty with Kate
Winslet, Keira Knightley and Jonah Hill.
Edgerton starred in the Jeff
Nichols-directed Midnight Special with Adam Driver, Kirsten Dunst and Michael
Shannon, and he’s shooting Loving, the Nichols-directed saga of Richard and
Mildred Loving, a mixed race couple that married in West Virginia and were
imprisoned and successfully sued in Supreme Court in a landmark civil rights
case. Focus Features acquired the project at Berlin.
Bright is being repped by CAA, which reps Ayer, Smith and
Edgerton, with WME repping Landis’ script. Writ Large also reps Ayer.
