Michael Bay is in talks to direct Will Smith in the Netflix action film Fast and Loose, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Fast and Loose focuses on a crime boss who loses his memory after an attack and gradually learns that he was leading a double life as a CIA agent. Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, Chris Bremner and Eric Pearson worked on the screenplay.
The movie has been in the works since before Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars ceremony. THR previously reported that David Leitch had exited the project the week before the fated Academy Awards telecast to start work on The Fall Guy, the Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt action-comedy feature that Universal released in May.
Producers for Fast and Loose include Leitch and Kelly McCormick for 87North, along with Smith. Robert Simonds and Noah Fogelson serve as executive producers for STXfilms.
Bay previously directed Smith in the 1995 action-comedy Bad Boys and its 2003 sequel. Smith and Martin Lawrence most recently played their characters from the franchise in its latest sequel, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which Sony released in theaters in June. That movie helped revive Smith’s standing as an in-demand film star following the Oscars fallout.
Shortly after the release of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which surpassed $400 million at the global box office, THR reported that Smith was in talks to star in Sony’s sci-fi feature Resistor. At the time, a director was not yet attached to the project that was set to adapt author Daniel Suarez’s 2014 novel Influx.
Other recent titles for Smith include 2022’s Emancipation and 2021’s King Richard, with the latter landing the star his first Oscar.
Bay’s most recent project as director was the 2022 Universal movie Ambulance, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Also known for his work on the Transformers franchise, Bay previously helmed Netflix’s Ryan Reynolds-led action flick 6 Underground that hit the streamer in 2019.
Deadline was first to report on Bay’s involvement in Fast and Loose.
