Will Smith’s new movie Fast and Loose is back on track with a new director.
The Netflix movie was due to be made by Michael Bay – who previously worked with Smith on 1995 action comedy Bad Boys and 2003 sequel Bad Boys II – but he’s believed to have exited the project in October with Deadline.com reporting he left due to “creative differences”.
However, the outlet now reports King Ivory director John Swab will be taking over after he “blew away not only the studio execs but the star of the film as well”.
Fast and Loose is believed to follow the story of a man who wakes up in the Mexican city of Tijuana with no memory and has to piece together the double life he’s been living as a crime kingpin and an undercover CIA agent.
Screenrant.com reports Smith wanted the story to lean more towards comedy while Bay is said to have wanted to focus on action.
Bad Boys producer Jerry Bruckheimer is producing Fast and Loose along with Chad Oman and Smith through his Westbrook film company, which he runs with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
The news comes after it was revealed Smith has signed a first-look deal with Paramount to create new theatrical films with Westbrook.
The 56-year-old actor has been largely frozen out of Hollywood since the Oscars ceremony in 2022 when he stormed the stage to slap host Chris Rock, but the new deal is expected to deliver him more roles with Jada taking on more producing projects, according to Variety.
In a statement announcing the agreement, Paramount said Westbrook would concentrate on “global, four-quadrant theatrical movies” with franchise potential, many of them based on pre-existing intellectual properties.
Paramount confirmed two films are already in development – Sugar Bandits, a thriller adapted from Chuck Hogan’s novel Devils in Exile, and Rabbit Hole, written by Jon Spaihts, one of the credited screenwriters of the Dune films.
Under the deal, Westbrook will be headquartered on the Paramount lot in Hollywood.
Westbrook has previously produced several high-profile titles. Emancipation starred Smith in 2022, while Bad Boys: Ride or Die became a commercial success in 2024 despite the controversy surrounding him.
King Richard, released in 2021, won Smith an Academy Award for best actor on the same night as the incident with Rock.
