More Will Smith news today.

The Hollywood Reporter say Columbia have paid a low seven figure sum to nab the rights to The Long Run, a spec script by Stephen Belber which Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment will produce. Unlike The Last Pharaoh, Smith has no interest in starring in this picture…

The script centers on a journalist who helps exonerate a highly charismatic death row inmate of a crime he didn’t commit. When the former inmate is recruited to run for elected office, the journalist leaves his post to orchestrate his rise to political prominence but soon faces a crisis of conscience as he discovers that his friend might be guilty of murder after all.

Cool plot, sounds a little like a Fritz Lang film noir.

Belber is a former playwright whose play Tape was turned into a Richard Linklater movie. The scribe has recently turned his attention to directing feature films, the first on his slate being Management, a rom-com starring Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn and Woody Harrelson which is now in post and will be released in September.

No word if he will direct this piece.