Ang Lee's 'Gemini Man' Starring Will Smith Gets 2019 Release Date

By Dave McNary

Paramount has set Ang Lee’s science-fiction actioner Gemini Man, starring Will Smith, for an awards-season release date of Oct. 4, 2019.

Skydance picked up the rights to the project, which has been in development for two decades, last year. Jerry Bruckheimer is producing and Don Murphy is executive producing.

Lee became attached to the project in April. His most recent film was Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, for which he used an unprecedented shooting and projection frame rate of 120 frames per second — five times faster than the normal rate of 24 frames per second. He won Academy Awards for directing Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, and was nominated for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

In 2009, the late Curtis Hanson had been attached to direct Gemini Man from a script by David Benioff, about an aging NSA agent who’s targeted for death when he tries to retire. He then discovers his assassin is a younger cloned version of himself.

Gemini Man was first set up at Disney in 1997 as a pitch by Darren Lemke, with Murphy producing and Tony Scott directing.

The film is the first title to be dated for October of 2019.