clive owen
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Will Smith is set to star in Academy Award winner Ang Lee’s clone assassin action film ‘Gemini Man’, about an aged NSA agent who wants to retire from the game, only for his employers to target him for death, pitting him against a clone of himself who is 25 years younger and in peak fighting shape.  Now we know that one of those who oppose Smith’s character’s retirement is none other than Clive Owen who was last seen in ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ and starred for two seasons on Cinemax’s ‘The Knick’.

Lee is now planning to cast the female lead and is said to have meetings scheduled with Tatiana Maslany (‘Orphan Black’), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (’10 Cloverfield Lane’), and Elizabeth Debicki (‘Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2’).

The film will be produced by Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media.  Jerry Bruckheimer, Skydance chief David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger serve as producers, with Don Murphy and Chad Oman as executive producers.

Production is expected to begin this spring with a release date of October 4th, 2019 already locked in.  Smith is currently shooting the live-action version of Disney’s ‘Aladdin’, in which he plays the Genie.  He is slated to provide a lead voice in the animated film ‘Spies In Disguise’ and also has ‘Bright 2’, ‘Suicide Squad 2’ and ‘Bad Boys 4 Life’ in the works, but it’s unclear when those will begin production.

The original script was by David Benioff, based on a pitch by Darren Lemke.  Tony Scott and Curtis Hanson were previously attached to direct.  Current director Lee is best known for his Academy Award winning movies ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘The Life of Pi’.

Owen will next be seen as Claudius in ‘Ophelia’, a retelling of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ told from the female perspective.  He also has two additional movies in post-production, ‘Anon’ and ‘Three Seconds’.

Source: Variety