Black List alums Shea Mirzai and Evan Mirzai have been hired to write the high school comedy “Ultra” for Sony Pictures and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment, TheWrap has learned.
Plot details are being kept under wraps but the project is described as an R-rated event movie starring teenagers. The idea was hatched internally at Overbrook before the Mirzai twins pitched Caleeb Pinkett during production of Sony’s football drama “Concussion,” who bought it then and there.
Will Smith, James Lassiter and Pinkett will produce for Overbrook along with Sandy Stern, who runs R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe’s company Single Cell Pictures. Overbrook executive Clarence Hammond will oversee the project on behalf of the company.
The Mirzai brothers made their debut on the Black List in 2012 with the romantic comedy script “Doppelgängers” and returned the following year with the action-comedy “Diablo Run,” which is currently in development at Todd Garner’s company Broken Road.
That script, which earned more votes than “American Sniper,” follows two best friends on a road trip to Mexico who are forced to enter a thousand-mile death race with no rules.
The duo most recently appeared on the 2014 Black List with “Beauty Pageant,” which follows two rival stage mothers who go head-to-head in an adult beauty pageant.
“Ultra” marks the first studio assignment for the Mirzais, who are now members of the WGA. They’re represented by Paradigm, Principato-Young Entertainment and SMGSB.
Other projects in development at Overbrook include the Hurricane Katrina drama “The American Can” and an adaptation of “The Billionaire’s Vinegar.”