The memory of Ang Lee, sensitive humanist auteur from Taiwan’s New Wave has become a distant memory over the past decade or so. All hail Ang Lee, constructor of boundary-pushing technical spectacle! He earned his second Best Director Academy Award for besting the hazard-trifecta of children, animals, and water with Life of Pi and then introduced public audiences to high-framerate hyperreal photography with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk last year. (Though opinions on the extent to which he succeeded on that second one vary wildly.) And now, the news is out that he’ll rejoin us in 2019 for another huge undertaking.

It was rumored that Lee might take the director’s chair on the long-gestating (like, “floating around studios for 20 years” long) project Gemini Man a couple of months ago. But Deadline’s got the major news that Lee is now in talks and the film has been scheduled for October 4, 2019, placing it far outside of the actual Gemini season, but that’s Paramount’s prerogative. Will Smith will star in the sci-fi film as an assassin forced to do battle with a clone of his younger self, one in the physical prime of his life. It has not been announced that the younger assassin will be played by Jaden Smith, but I am of the opinion that it would be a tremendous waste it he was not.

The project was believed to be impossible to make for year, but now that we have the visual effects technology to de-age actors, it looks like Smith will be playing two age versions of the same character. Lee’s most recent film was regarded as a neat experiment but ultimately a failure, awarding points to Lee for trying but faulting his execution. How he’ll redeem himself with Gemini Man has yet to be seen, but moviegoers can be sure he’s going to cook up something major.

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