You might run into Will Smith on the streets of Montreal this fall. The 55-year-old actor will play the main role in a Hollywood film which is to be shot in the metropolis starting in September.
According to information recently disclosed in an article on the specialized site Deadline Hollywoodthe filming of this action thriller titled Sugar Bandits will take place in Montreal and Boston this fall. The film’s budget is around 80 million US dollars, or approximately 110 million Canadian dollars.
The newspaper has learned that members of the feature film team will arrive in Montreal in the coming days to open a pre-production office in the MELS Studios premises. Around ten weeks of filming are planned in the metropolis, from September to December.
Adapted from the novel Devils in Exile by author Chuck Hogan (The Town), Sugar Bandits will tell the story of an Iraq war veteran (played by Will Smith) who decides to form a squad made up of former comrades in arms in order to dismantle a network of drug traffickers in Boston.
The direction of the feature film was entrusted to Italian filmmaker Stefano Sollima, an expert in action films who in 2018 directed the sequel to the thriller Sicario, by Denis Villeneuve. The names of the actors who will play alongside Will Smith have not yet been revealed.
A successful return
Two years after his controversial slap at the Oscars, Will Smith is trying to win back his fans this summer with the release, last Friday, of Bad boys: to life, to death, the 4th part of the popular saga.
And it is clear that the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has succeeded in his bet: the action comedy in which he stars alongside Martin Lawrence has risen to the top of the North American box office, garnering more than 56 million dollars at the box office during its first three days on display.
After being paralyzed by strikes in Hollywood for several months in 2023, American filming resumed with a vengeance in Montreal this year. The next film in the saga Karate Kid and the action thriller Maydaystarring Ryan Reynolds, were recently filmed in the metropolis.
