Will Smith set to join sci-fi thriller Resistor following Bad Boys: Ride or Die's breakout success

Audiences haven't turned their back on Will Smith, who's just had a huge comeback with Bad Boys: Ride or Die earning over $220 million during the two first weeks following its release. Now, he's joining another high-profile sci-fi thriller at Sony Pictures.

The news was dropped on June 18 by Deadline, which also pointed out that the project, currently titled Resistor, is adapting Daniel Suarez's book Influx.

The 2014 novel is a sci-fi thriller "that follows physicist Jon Grady and his team, who have discovered a device that can reflect gravity — a triumph that will revolutionize the field of physics and change the future." The problem is that "a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control" shows up to lock down the laboratory and seize the device, also throwing Grady into "a nightmarish high-tech prison." The goal of Grady and other prisoners isn't only to escape, but also to expose the truth about technological advancements that have been kept from humanity by a hidden enemy.

Deadline was also able to confirm the production company Escape Artists had been "developing the project for some time", before getting a script which excited executives and offering Smith the opportunity to be the vehicle's star. Of course, a deal was closed shortly after Bad Boys 4's killer box office opening.

Smith has always had a penchant for science fiction, with blockbusters like Independence Day, I, Robot, and 2019's ill-fated Gemini Man among his most talked-about works in that space. Now, he's also attached to I Am Legend 2, which plans to (kind of) bring his character back from the dead by building upon the (much better) alternate ending of the original.