Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy to direct Will Smith’s production ‘Brilliance’

Four-time Emmy Award and two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has another project in the pipeline that assuredly makes us all proud. The Ms. Marvel director is all set to make her narrative feature directorial debut with the film Brilliance. 

Brilliance is being produced by Will Smith. The film will be an adaptation of Marcus Sakey’s book by the same name. Brilliance is the first book in the trilogy which is followed by the sequel novels A Better World and Written in Fire. 

According to Deadline, the premise of the film revolves around the concept of gifted children who are born with powerful gifts. The Brilliance novel trilogy is set in a future where non-neurotypical people — demonized by society as “twists” or “abnorms” — are threatening the status quo of the “normal” population with their unique gifts. They are officially labeled as “Brilliants” and are carefully tracked by the government.

The book series hero Nick Cooper is a federal agent who works for the Department of Analysis and Response. His job is to track down and terminate criminal abnorms who use their gifts for ill. The agent is himself an abnorm, with a gift for predictive analysis that allows him to see what will happen before it happens and react preemptively. He is also the father of a Brilliant daughter.

As he infiltrates a radical group of Brilliants who plan to incite a civil war, he uses his own gifts against his Brilliant enemies, like an assassin who perceives time faster than his opponents. When Cooper is ordered to hunt down John Smith (the antagonist)— the country’s most elusive and most dangerous abnorm — everything Cooper believes in will be called into question. As one of the abnorms he’s hunting tells him, “You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side.”

It is anticipated that besides working in the capacity of a producer, Will Smith has been roped in to play the role of the protagonist Nick Cooper in the film.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is also one of the directors of Ms. Marvel and has previously directed Saving Face and A Girl in the River, The Price of Forgiveness. We are beaming with joy after hearing this news. Indeed seeing Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy reaching new heights in Hollywood is a pride moment for us all.